One of my favorites

One of my favorite song in Muziboo.com

Trying out the new camera

Stork
Originally uploaded by Prateek Dayal

Tried out the new EOS400D camera and the sigma 70-300mm lens yesterday at ranganathittu bird sanctuary near Mysore. Some shots came out well although a DSLR is still very very baffling to me compared to a point and shoot. I think a long way to go before I can take great pictures .. the kinds that originally inspired me to buy a DSLR :)

Got it!

I finally got the following gear:

Canon EOS400D Kit
Sigma 70-300mm DG Macro Lens
2 GB Sandisk Compact Flash Card
A couple of UV filers, bags etc

I got the stuff from Jayesh, Chikpet, Bangalore. Must say a nice enthu guy :).
Will click some pictures soon and post them somewhere. I plan to start a photoblog or start tagging these posts with soemthing so that I can keep a track of them in future :)

Ubuntu !

So I finally installed ubuntu on my laptop and quite a few softwares too. I have installed 7.04 and the only issue was in getting the wireless working. I have Dell Inspiron 2200 and have wireless mini pci 1370 b/g adapter. I followed the instructions here finally and it was up and working. I think the main thing is to use the driver files for ndiswrapper from the link given in this forum post.

Feels good to be running linux again!

Photography 201

hi,

I think I am kind of through with photography 101. But then that is a personal feeling. I often feel the need for much better zoom and also want to try out with a digital SLR. I have been reading a lot lately about different cameras and lenses etc and I think this would be the gear that I would be buying soon. May be not all of it at once but over some period of time

1. Canon EOS400D kit (with 18-55mm lens)
2. 2 GB Extreme CF Card
3. A decent tripod, camera bag, some filters may be
4. 70-300m Tamron Telephoto Macro lens

Right now I am just trying to figure out the best deals and also work out funds for the gear. I am getting a very good deal on 350D but then I am not sure if I "don't" wanna buy a 400D. Let me see !

Hello Fiesty

Right now I am installing Fiesty Fawn on my laptop and blogging from the same machine. I hope to get back into some linux action again. I suddenly have this itch to be all geeky again and this will be the first stuff. Second or third should be to get a domain name and start a website with a technical blog.

Lets see how the whole experiment goes.

PS: Can someone lend me a DVD writer so that I can backup my second windows partition and make it /home ? :)

Getting Married !

I am getting married on the 28th of this month to Nithya. We got engaged on 14th of march and here is a link to the pictures

Engagement

See you after the wedding ! :)

Prateek

Barcamp 3 in IIM Bangalore on 31st April and 1st May

Barcamp Bangalore

Barcamp is an adhoc gathering, an open event for people to meet up, share, exchange ideas and possibilities. We turn around the notion of a formal conference by eliminating the distinction between speakers and delegates. Everyone is just a participant, and is equally welcome to propose a discussion, moderate it, or speak up on a topic they are familiar with.

Does this work? Indeed! Look up the main Barcamp site for the several that have taken place around the world so far, or read up on what an unconference is.


I hope to attend this barcamp as I have heard a lot about it. See you all there.

iMate

I finally got a new phone. Check the company link here

I have been using it for like 3/4 days now and I feel its worth the price. I got it from official mobiles, residency road, bangalore and they offered a really good price to me. I got the phone with a 2GB memory card (mini-SD), which is the maximum the phone can support. Without a memory card, its very tough to exploit the features phone has to offer as you cannot install any new applications.

Looks and built quality of the phone is really nice although I would have preferred a camera lens cover. One thing I found was the keys are really closely spaced and I feel some problem typing messages.

The interface is pretty neat and once you get used to it, things can be done real quick. The phone is responsive enough unless you are running a really heavy application on it (like a mp3 player with equalizers etc). It sports an internet explorer and pocket outlook and they work very well. With integrated wifi, the phone is very useful. I installed skype on the phone and could talk to a friend in US (using skype out) while connected to my linksys router. The connection manager handles security keys etc pretty well. I have faced no issues on that front.

In terms of the software bundled, Active Sync is included and its pretty easy to transfer files to the phone. I have not been able to figure out a way to sync using bluetooth yet, but then I have not even opened the manual till now.

On the entertainment front, it is good to install core player on the phone for videos and pocket pc music player for mp3 as the integrated media player is not very impressive. Pocket PC music player, though very heavy on system resources is actually very impressive in terms of sound quality. If you are a music freak, this is a must have software. However its not freely available and you can only try out a shareware version for free.

The camera on the phone is 1.3 M pixel but has no autofocus. I feel cameras on sony ericsson (ones with autofocus atleast) are much better and if you are really looking for a great camera, consider those phones.

My overall impression of the phone has been pretty good and I feel its worth the money I paid. I paid around 11k for the phone and 1.5k for the mini-SD card, which sounds reasonable to me. I had considered sony ericsson etc too while buying this phone and I feel one must seriously consider an iMate before you finalize on something else.

Waters and more ....

Roger Waters' Dark Side of the Moon concert
Febuary 18th
Bandra Kurla Complex
Mumbai

One day trip ...

A memory for life ...

Looking forward to it ...

See you there :)

Love or something like that

Today I am going to write about something I don't even have much insight into. I wrote a post on relationships some time back. My perspective on it. Today I will write on love .. just the emotion. I will try to explain what it is and I know I will fail miserably. It takes a thousand ghalibs to explain it. But I still want to :)

I feel love is like a state. But before that its like this transition. You don't see it happening in you, but it happens and you look in the mirror after sometime and you see a different person. Love has this great power to make you happy. And with happiness comes a lot of other things in life. Belief in another person is one. Now this is a great feeling in itself. In this world full of cynicism, betrayal, you start trusting a person more than even yourself. At first you find it funny, but slowly it becomes a state of mind. This trust can do wonders to you. You start looking at life in a new way. All the bad things stop mattering or don't matter that much. As put beautifully in "Shall we dance", your life starts mattering to someone. So even the mundane things become romantic all of a sudden. Life does not change as such. You still go to work, drive through the crazy traffic, but then one day you realize that you are not cursing the bad traffic enough. You wonder whats wrong .. or is the world a better place ... its not .. its just you. You are in love ....

Another interesting thing happens in love. It happens more so if your partner shares an interest for the things you like. You always liked things; but those things being liked by someone else is like this invisible bond between the two of you. You can call it "having same taste", but then you know its a much deeper emotion. Everytime a song plays on the radio and the two of you look at each other with the "I know ... ain't that song great" look, you know you are in love.

However there are many example to suggest that this is not necessary. I think it has more to do with the fact that you want to do things together. In fact you do not even have to do things together. All you really want to do is be together. Be together to witness the moments in each other's life. It could be one of you playing a song on the guitar or making a great dish or even something geeky. Does not matter what it is. All that matters is that you feel proud of the other person and you can see it in the other person's eyes how much it matters to them that you are there to appreciate something they did. In fact in love it all comes so naturally. Your partner doing something that you always wanted to do or found impossible is like you doing it. I guess thats why they call them "your better half". In a true sense two people in love complete each other, as well as they can. Thats the spirit. That should be the spirit.

There are lots of other nice things in love. There are some not so nice things too. Anything that gives you so much happiness can give you a lot of pain too. But then I love the spirit that two ppl have in love to get out of their problems. The lack of 'i-have-had-enuf' attitude is what makes love such a great emotion. Relationships still break. But then I feel you should be seriously asking if there was ever a 'i-want-to-make-it-work' attitude and if there was .. where did you screw up. I think love in all forms can be a great teacher. Its an education for life. It teaches you how to find the most valuable thing in life and how to keep it. How to cherish it and
how to make sure it gets better over time and so do you.

As a friend once told me "Love is like God; its existence can always be questioned. Its your belief that really matter". I guess thats love for me as i feel it right now. Nothing makes sense ???? you were warned :)

Welcome 2007

2006 finished on a not so pleasant note. 2007 arrived in the most beautiful way but has been not so obliging since then. But then this is a long year. Somethings were expected and the unexpected things add spice to life and also are like an exam. I think I will manage through ... I think "we" will :)

Here is wishing everyone "A Happy New Year"