It isn't.

Computer Science!

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 05:40:28 GMT

Dijsktra wouldn't be proud of this state of the art, would he?

Lost items.

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 05:43:14 GMT

Seen in an Indiana University classifieds forum.

Here cometh the fledgling academic.

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 06:23:40 GMT

Hi. This is your humble correspondent reporting from Bloomington, Indiana, in the United States of America, home to Indiana University's lovely campus. My purpose here is to begin the Ph.D. programme in Computer Science this spring term and thus generally have a mix of nice time and miserable time for the next few years. I was admitted for the fall term but had to defer it to spring due to various, umm, circumstances. I do miss home, Bangalore, and the tropical country weather, but Bloomington is such a pretty little university town and should adequately compensate for all feelings of nostalgia and homesickness.

At the time of writing, there's still 24 minutes left to the end of January 1, and that is barely enough time left to wish a rather belated happy new year to the few people still reading this livejournal thing. So, happy new year, yo.

I reached here on Friday, early in the morning, after a short-ish flight, another long-ish and delayed flight, some missing piece of luggage from this long-ish flight (lesson learned: the next time, distribute the underwear evenly into every piece of luggage you have; also: give up on Air India already), then a cancelled flight, some twelve hours of waiting in Chicago airport, and then another short-ish flight to Indianapolis and then an hour-long cab ride to Bloomington. I'd been checking weather reports for the last couple of months, worrying that I might freeze to death the moment I step out of the artificially warmed interiors of one of these airports, but that hasn't happened yet. The day I came here, it actually turned out to be quite warm (12° C), but it's been getting colder again. Right now, the town is very quiet; in a week or so it's going to teem with students again; I get to enjoy the peace and quiet and cold in the meanwhile. I'm looking for a place to live, so I'm also knocking on various doors and annoying various people.

My film stash and a couple of film cameras have survived the trip, but at this point I don't know how much of the film photography obsession a poor, impoverished, sleep-deprived graduate student could afford. Let's hope for the best!

A September evening.

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 07:35:19 GMT

A certain tall expatriate visited us last month, and although he was quite busy with his mysterious activities (which we suspect involved strange people, alcohol, gluttony, little children, and late nights), we managed to drag him about in the ooru for an afternoon. This day was memorable for my new old Pentax ME Super broke by lunchtime. But I managed to shoot two rolls of film using the other good camera during this walk-about. Here are bunch of them, all shot on the very inexpensive, expired, ISO 125 Sterling film, pushed to ISO 800: a rather maniac experiment that gave some surprisingly decent results.

But is it art?

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:51:26 GMT

Results of a recent wandering, processed right after a week. I made a mess of the film, basically because of lack of patience and maybe because I'm out of practice. Anyhow I like the quick feedback loop when you process film soon after it's shot -- kind of like the preview on LCD screen of a digital camera, but better... somehow. I should make time for this more often.

Old stuff.

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:43:36 GMT

Old pictures shot with a digital camera. Because that is the appropriate thing to do after scoffing at the digital juggernaut, yes. Nostalgic pieces at a personal level, and these snapshots of the past somehow seems happier on introspection. Although I can clearly remember cribbing, cringing, and dealing with a strong urge to go around kicking people in the groin. Strange.

Mudra.

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:37:24 GMT

I'm going to resume the old picture-dumping practice here, dammit. It sucks having no written memories of my silly and therefore not having sufficient motivation to further involve in the said silly. Yes, have no doubts, it is circular like that.

Here's for an auspicious beginning -- my good old frother lomax13 giving some kind of gesture. I don't know what it is, but it sure looks cool. I guess he was inspired by some Kathakali mudra.

This is an year old exposure, shot on an old expired roll of Kodak Portra 800, graciously given gratis by Kodak USA. I scanned this last night. Either the lab had done a marvelous job of mishandling it, or I did a marvelous job of mis-storing or mis-scanning it. Guess what, this kind of grit and grain is what adds character to film shots, and keeps the film-fanatic old farts like me superior to kids with digital cameras and boring megapixel talk.

The apple that did not astonish Paris.

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:04:25 GMT

So I was sent to Paris during the glorious French winter of 2009 for a job training. Quit the previous one in September (they moved from center of the city to a ghetto in the outskirts (own space, but what do I care about that), thus my commute became sitting four goddam hours in a car from what was a fifteen-minutes stroll, and this became the mythical final straw that broke the camel's back), took a small break which now feels like a haze, and joined this new one in November. In no time my new employer figured out that I'm absolutely useless without some serious training, and thus I landed in their Paris office.

While in Paris, I managed to not to do much outside work, except for the obligatory tourist gig on a weekend. What follows is the result. Obviously there's much, much more I should have done other than staying curled up in the hotel room. But like always, there's a next time. There ought to be, and, note to self: when that occasion comes, dude, you better be the master of your own schedule.

There're likely some more here.

New year aa?

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:01:35 GMT

Shoo, po! Bloody nuisance! Not interested! We aren’t done with the old year yet!

We still aren’t done with all the nothing we wanted to do in the last year, err, this year… err, whatever.

The walking freak show.

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 10:31:42 GMT

Also known as maxaud.

Email Chucknorrisism.

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:51:02 GMT

~~Thunderbird~~ Chuck Norris can fetch more emails than the server has.

Street scene, not.

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:37:03 GMT

Do we have a fable here, Aesop? Do we have a haiku, Basho?

I for one don't want no quotidian business around here. The hen could grow, grow immensely, snatch the dog and fly away. Fly over white clouds on a deep blue sky, over blue mountains overlooking a gorgeous valley. The closed shop shutter could be hiding a magic caveway to a magic castle. The xerox machine could be no ordinary xerox machine, it could be a magic xerox machine --

Wait, this must be the effect of watching too many Miyazaki movies. I usually sleep a dreamless, memoryless sleep, but last night in the dream I was looking at myself in a mirror. Most hair was gone. There were bad, big, dark, green warts on the skull. A few odd patches of hair remained. Eyes, I don't remember much about them --

Right, there's something called too much Miyazaki.

In Madurai.

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:38:19 GMT

In Madurai,
city of temples and poets,
who sang of cities and temples

Here's a poem, A River, by A K Ramanujan.

Here're a bunch of pictures, by, err, me. There should have been more, given that this is Madurai and Madurai is the kind of place that is full of people and things and sights that a camera can devour. But I have grown lazy to carry a camera all the time, and grown shy to poke that thing on people's noses. So it happens that insentients get most attention, willing sentients get some attention, unwilling ones not so much. As it happened in the final edit, the more interesting pictures are that of sentients.

What a conundrum.

Sounds of silence.

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:56:18 GMT

I wanted to write something here while connection to the Internet ethers lasts, but forgot what it was. Guess it was this: I kind of miss writing something here now and then.

Like all of you good people, I too miss the Good Old Days^TM when livejournal used to thrive. I miss those conversations.

Onakkazhcha

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:45:13 GMT

Friends in Malayalikkoottam are organizing a photography exhibition at Durbar Hall, Kochi between August 17 and 23. All proceedings go towards charity. Go view them pictures and say hello to them folks if you happen to be in Kochi this week.

Uncle Sajith Uncle Sajith.

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 17:12:00 GMT

There's this new guy in the family; and a new mother, new father, new grandmother, new grandfather. And a brand new uncle.

Grow up quickly mister. We have things to learn, things to do, things to break, things to mend, places to go, places to come back from. Quickly quickly grow up.

In which the protagonist is back in the plains, after a brief hiatus.

Sun, 10 May 2009 16:52:56 GMT

People, if you would not be bothered too much, would you mind visiting this set of pictures from Pondicherry? (Sales pitch: You get to see a great deal of colour cast on pictures shot on expired slide film! And puppies! And an almost naked maxaud!) And, if you are reasonably satisfied after the viewing, would you also mind leaving some standard-issue flickr comments (such as: "great capture", "nice image"; and never: "this sucks!")? That would justify my spending a great deal of money on developing two rolls of expired medium format Kodak Ektachrome E100VS film. Much thanks in advance. Really, I would appreciate that.

(In Bangalore, Prabhu Digital's rate for developing a roll of slide is Rs 500. That would be Rs 750 at G G Welling, but I suspect G G Welling basically sends it to Prabhu and pockets a cool 50% middleman's margin -- that is what they did with another roll of medium format colour negative anyway. No prizes for guessing whom your humble correspondent entrusted with developing his precious chromes. Lesson has been learned the hard way, which would be: wisdom is what happens after the credit card has been swiped.)

Also, have you read Introduction to Poetry? ("I ask them to take a poem / and hold it up to the light / like a color slide". Thanks so much for reminding, Dem.) While digging the Internet for more Billy Collins, I came across this (Walking Across the Atlantic, from "The Apple That Astonished Paris"):

I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beach
before stepping onto the first wave.

Soon I am walking across the Atlantic
thinking about Spain,
checking for whales, waterspouts.

I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.
Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface.

But for now I try to imagine what
this must look like to the fish below,
the bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing.

Just to say this much: that is what we all ought to do when we go near the seaside. No?

I want that bikini-clad torso back, please.

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:17:12 GMT

Just received this screenshot in email. Well, I thought that was kind of acceptable, but I just can't stand this. So let's just speechify this a bit.

I am not apolitical. I have never voted Congress, not even in a panchayath election. But I have this much to say: no matter how disappointing you think Manmohan Singh is as Prime Minister (I actually tend to think that he's severely underappreciated), he's a thousand times more respectable and acceptable than all Indian right-wing combined. No amount of spindoctoring, no amount of whitewashing, no amount of autobiography writing, no amount of blogging, no amount of Internet advertisement, is making me forget the blood trails of Advani's many a rath yathra.

So I'm anxiously waiting to see how a billion unwashed and undereducated are going work their magic this time around. They overthrew Indira Gandhi when her autocratic tendencies started to show up, they overthrew Vajpayee in spite of India Shining. Or consider this: 1984, Delhi riots, in which Sikhs were violently persecuted. 2004: a Sikh for Prime Minister, leading the same party some of whose leaders were accused of inciting the 1984 violence. That was as thrilling as anything else. You all can celebrate Obama as much as you want and wait for an Indian avatar of Obama, but we've already had people like K R Narayanan (a dalit President) and Manmohan Singh. Our media will project Advani, Mayawati, Narendra Modi or whoever else they think will manage to fool the nation, but one thing is sure: they will get it wrong this time around also.

And then I will have my laugh at this banner ad.

Gokarna.

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:10:03 GMT

Here is a bunch of old pictures from Gokarna, back from 2007. I was just reminded of them by purely_narcotic's group invitation in flickr. (Thank you.)

Keralappiravi dinam (the day Kerala as we see it on the map today was born under the provisions in the State Reorganisation Act 1956: November 1, 1956) fell on one of those days. This we celebrated by walking about under the sun on the beach sand, with intermittent supplies of beer made by our favourite alcohol baron's bird-logo'ed company. (Right, November 1 is Karnataka Rajyotsava also, to be fair to the lovely people that's provided us with economic refuge. Salut. Merci.)

On the other hand, legend is that Parashuraaman (alias Parashurama, alias Parasuram) hurled his mighty axe all the way from Gokarna to Kanyakumari, and then rose from ocean the glorious People's Communist Democratic Republic of Kerala. Until the first democratically elected Communist government actually happened, and them filthy Comminists brought the Kerala Land Reforms Act (1963) into effect, descendants of the original Brahmin settlers to whom Parashuraaman had relinquished land rights (this was out of caste allegiance, I believe) ruled over all Kerala landmass. (Feel free to form your own Brahmin hegemony conspiracy theory, or variants, or counter-theories thereof.) Anyway, this is the mythological and perhaps historical significance of Gokarna, at least for us beef-eating, rum-drinking (this bit about food-alcohol habit is not vast generalisation, my Highly Scientific Observational Study has proven this to be correct) abnormal Indian populace. So while there, we naturally joked about throwing another axe in the same general direction in order to claim some more expensive real estate. After all we owe it to the original land-grabber, don't we.

Now, what's interesting about this picture is that four of us saw the same thing and shot it in more or less the same way.

Here is a picture maxaud took, with his digital SLR, with a 50mm f/1.8 lens.
Here is a picture blackfin2 took, with his digital SLR, with his almighty Canon L-series lens.
And here is a picture lomax13 took, with his paavam film SLR and a paavam "kit" lens, on Kodak Ektachrome (E100G or maybe E100VS) slide film. This by far is my favourite of the lot.

(Right, pseudonymous sissies, all three of them.)

I believe this is sufficient reason for continued love for film, even in its humblest incarnations: those days I carried an old light-leaking Yashica Electro 35 GSN with me, and this was shot on some very ordinary Kodak Colour Plus film or something. (I actually like the light leaks.) We further discovered the very cheap Sterling 125 B&W film (Rs 35/roll, no more) in a Gokarna photo studio. Apparently this is Lucky film or something bulk-loaded into rejected film canisters. It'd have been wonderful if I could find some more of that to play with. (Results from this film are actually quite decent. I haven't made prints or anything, still.)

(I apologize for using too many brackets, including this one.)

J. D. Ganesh.

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:29:22 GMT

You had no idea old Ganapati was a secret Jedi Knight, had you?

(In the interest of full disclosure: the only Star Wars movie I've seen is Revenge of the Sith. And I slept through most of it. But that doesn't make a lightsaber on Ganapati any less cool, does it?)

firefly

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:29:34 GMT

Leh, in August. Little firefly was out shopping with her mother.

Professor Appunni's sheema nellikka eating lecture demonstration.

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:19:37 GMT

Hello class. Welcome to this sheema nellikka eating lecture demonstration. Here we examine the delightful procedure of eating sheema nellikka in detail. Sheema nellikka, as you might know, is a tropical berry that keeps a raw-tart-sweet taste when ripe. You can pick one from the ground, or pluck one from the tree, and then plonk it into the mouth, chew away, savour the tanginess... crunch crunch. Slurrrp. Mmmm. Mmmmm.

While we do not know precisely or care about the English or Latin names for this nice little gooseberry-namesake, we can easily speculate about its possibly foreign origins, because, you know, sheema stands for the olde England. Since England is hardly a tropical country, we could further postulate that this came to India from a south American country, probably Brazil, much like coffee. But neither the etymology nor the botanical origins should concern us as far as our goal is properly enjoying the sheema nellikka taste. This is an art, much like wine tasting is an art, I tell you.

Well dammit, I don't have the patience to explain further, which is ignorant ramble anyway. I can't talk through all this megalitres of drool either. Just watch me doing this:

A bonus side-effect is that the fibrous flesh of sheema nellikka even cleans your teeth! Which means no Colgate anymore! Damn the corporate teethcare! All you need is this gift of sheema nellikka from Mother Nature! See! See!

After this lecture Professor Appunni invited his class to try and repeat the eating procedure on their own. The sole student stepped out with some trepidation:

(I don't know when these kids would grow up and send goons to beat me up. They grow pretty fast these days. In my defence, I'm just volunteering for the Bharatiya Silliness Bachao Andolan, so maybe I can plead I was only doing my job. And the children get to share the fruit produces along with the visiting crows, various other birds, bats, and squirrels. In theory everybody should be happy. In practice we know that this is a far more complicated affair.)

Up north, in the Chalukya HQ.

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:26:35 GMT

Sidharth (alright, mat_attack), Vivek and I had been to Badami, Pattadakal and Aihole a weekend back. We strayed about, moved around in creaky-jumpy vans and buses, gawked at temple ~~porn~~ art, drank beer, did not watch the adult movie in a local cinema hall as planned, drank some more beer, speculated a bit about life back then when kings were kings and the rest were mere losers, hatched plans for Sid's upcoming Booker and Filmfare winners, and had an overall good time. Children and sometimes adults (even the infamous Badami monkeys, I would say) came to me asking to be photographed, and so the LCD preview came much handy. (Now that is truly something to appreciate about digital.) These are my people and I love them to bits for their generosity. However I now have the problem of ending up with too many pictures. It's aggravated by these places being such that every nook, corner, cranny and stone has a story.

As always, I regret going there with little homework. (Not even a cursory glance on related wikipedia articles, imagine that.) Badami and whereabouts are not as touristy as the neighbouring Hampi (notable is the nearly total absence of souvenir shops and guides), so the plan to buy a guide book and do some instant research did not work. So it happens that we just have not explored or appreciated the place well enough. But as always, there should be a next time when we would do this Better^TM, correcting our past mistakes.

Now that I'm distant and going through the pictures, everything about Badami is beautiful. Even the ubiquitous stray pigs wallowing in drains are beautiful. The complete (beautiful!) picture dump is here, if you happen to have some time and patience. Thanks already!

Smiles abound.

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 17:01:13 GMT

Just a very happy person contributing to raising the per capita happiness of the nation.

I, like this young man here, would like to belive that our collective acute awareness of the silliness of everything is the answer to everything. Terrorism, television, stomach fat, advertisements concerning thereof, road widening, roads not widening, too many cars, not enough cars, global warming, peak oil, perils to biodiversity, cyclic economic recessions, the state of Pakistan, yellow press, now-whining previously-apathetic middle class, not having enough to worry about, the goddamn doomsday. Everything.

Keep that smile on, boy. We're going to need that.

Et tu?

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:52:13 GMT

In one of the rare, weak moments when ad blocker / ad blocker plus were turned off and I was not logged into the site, I found these big banner ads on my livejournal page. Two of them, on top and bottom respectively. It read thusly:

How I Lost 17 Pounds of Stomach Fat in 9 Weeks!

With the accompanying shot of a female's bikini-clad torso. I mean, how embarrassing. Livejournal was so beautiful once upon a time. Now I can't help thinking that it's become the Internet's equivalent of a flea-infested stinky dog.

I shouldn't be complaining with this gratis account and all, but still. Nostalgia can't be anybody's exclusive forte.