Songs.pk used for hacking??

So the word is out in Indian newspapers today that songs.pk runs malicious software enabling hackers to access data on your system. Wow, like half of India uses that site to get the latest Bollywood music. Paranoia must have struck many a heart. Another reason to start buying music. (or stop listening to music. :P)
Funnily Norton does not agree with the Indian govt. link

Don't send messages you will later regret

Lately I have been thinking that Google was becoming to corporatised and just like easter eggs began disappearing from Windows, soon Google will become all nice and propah with the element of spontaneity missing.
Fortunately I have been proved wrong. Gmail just added a wacky feature that aims to prevent you from sending mails which you will regret later. Mails say you would send after downing a glass too much.
Read about the feature here.

LHC Stuff

Some Large Hadron Collider stuff. (Watch closely)

Webcams

:)

Brian Cox v/s the President of the British Association of the Advancement of Science

Heh.. here is Dr. Brian Cox giving the President of the British Association of the Advancement of Science what he exactly needs to hear. Delightful. What a nutcase we have as a president of advancement of science. Maybe he should be President of the British Association of the Advancement of "Applied" Science, going by the way he talks.

Shredding documents... wait..

So you thought that the document you shredded is gone forever. The secrets it contained will no longer burden you. Maybe you need a reality check. Have a look at this.

http://www.unshredder.com/

An old woman at Matheran

Lately, I have found myself becoming insensitive to my surroundings. Perhaps its the drain on mental energy making a career or perhaps its the subconscious Indian aspiration to disassociate oneself from aam junta. Whenever I look over the pictures I take, I feel them to be too touristy. They look like pictures taken by someone who has no time to pause and appreciate the surroundings for what they are. Along with this has crept in a general intolerance and suspicion of new people I meet, which might seem as normal behaviour for some.

But I have always enjoyed taking some time out and trying to see life from different perspectives. So when I was jolted out of my cocoon a few days ago by this old woman, I felt guilty.

I saw her as I was walking on the narrow guage railway track at Matheran. She sat there at the base of an advertising board, many of which have cropped up along the track, ruining the natural charm of the line and lining the pockets of the railway officers. She looked curiously at the tourists and I thought of her as some local woman waiting for her daughter in law to collect firewood. Her eyes darted from tourist to tourist. I zoomed on to her from my camera as she made a good picture. Exploitative photography.. we like to see poor people and then sigh and mutter that something has to be done and then go our way. While I was trying to get an angle on her, she called out to me and asked whether she could carry my bag. Immediately I dismissed her telling myself that I am a true trekker and would not allow anybody to carry my bag for me. As I walked away she pleaded to let her carry my bag and that she had nobody in this world.


I did not know how to react. The tone of the voice was so genuine, I was scared to even look back at her. I did nothing, just walked away but her voice kept haunting me. As I downloaded the pictures from my camera, I saw her picture and that look that did not betray her loneliness.

Is this how it is to be poor, old and lonely? What inner strength, what motivation drives her? I wished I had stopped and taken some time to understand her. But I was busy... busy returning home... yeah.

Sonavle Caves Mini Documentary

One more place I had visited in winter, the Sonavle Caves near Dhasai on the route to Vaishakhare via Mhasa. These are a set of 14 caves in a great state and taken care of by the villagers. This video was shot in the biggest of the caves. I took a group of 4 boys from the village of Sonavle to show me the way. Check out more pictures on my Flickr page.

Hal Caves Mini Documentary

Went to Hal Caves in December on bike. This is a single cave, more than 5 centuries old, hardly known to people and in a state of utter disrepair. This was the little documentation video that I shot there.

A Byte of Python

After a lot of help manuals and O'Reilly books this is the book that I have begun to like, as I learn Python. Titled 'A Byte of Python' it is written by a guy called Swaroop CH who works for Adobe.

http://www.swaroopch.com/projects/#anc-abop

Written in the way you would normally take notes, and with nice working examples, it is easy to understand and remember stuff in the book.

Have a look.

Number Stations

It began with me getting curious about those funny random word sites that mess up google searches so often. These sites usually chinese in origin have nothing in them but random words. Even the htm file names are random words.

eg
vintage american family baby scale 30 lbs pounds limit vintage...
45x74 winchester model 1890 62a slide action .22 extractor
primitive ...... height 10 x width 7 speedo fs2pro men's
completed cross stitch mallard duck audi ...

Jumping from one page to another led me to this page which talks about "Number Stations" . If you have listened to shortwave radio, you must have come across these stations which have some person just reciting and repeating a sequence of words or numbers. I had never paid attention to it, but its amazing how deep the rabbit hole goes. At the very basic level these are supposedly government sponsored stations which communicate with spies.
Found this amazing BBC radio documentary on that topic. Download it from this page. Just 6 mb, its worth it. Do a search in Wikipedia for Number Stations for further info.

WiFi @ Home

The glamour of lounging on the sofa or bed or anywhere in the house and browsing the net on the laptop seemed so inviting. I also needed a semipermanent connection between the desktop and the laptop as my USB drive network (copy to USB drive - take USB drive to the laptop - paste into laptop) was getting a little tiresome. Then there is internet sharing. And most important of all, multiplayer games :). All this is now possible. I got a wireless router installed at home (Thanks again to Sachin) and the fun has started. Now I can also chat with my wife through yahoo messenger. Ahh!! reminds me of those pre marriage days. Anybody for a LAN party?

Some pics taken by me

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14283247@N02/

Neat Image

Troubled by noise in your digital camera pictures... no worries, help is at hand. Consider buying Neat Image, a nice little program to get rid of noise. It relies on device noise profiles which combined with an algorithm specifically geared towards digital photography, give very good results. Another must have for digital photography enthusiasts.

Google Flight Simulator

My HDD crash disconnected me from the online world for a couple of weeks and look what they found. Google has been upto its tricks as always putting in some nice easter eggs. This one is a Flight Simulator in Google Earth. Not the clumsy one you saw in Excel some year ago, but a good one using GE imagery, with a couple of planes and some Airports thrown in. Go here to read about it and how to activate it.
Talking of flights, a sad bit of news this Sunday with ColinMcRae dying in a helicopter crash. Rally fans and gamers need no introduction of ColinMcRae. Its just so sad that he died so suddenly.RIP.

Caller Ring Tune

For those who have been wondering, what is that song on my caller back tune... here is the video. Yeah..a really old song.

Kothligad Trek

It can be very frustrating to drive a bike in its run in period and I wanted to shorten that time as quickly as possible. So I though up of this idea of going to treks on Bike. Sachin supported the idea and Sachin, Sanket, Chaitanya and I took off for a trek to Kothligad on August 18.
As usual, Google earth was referred to and I decided on the Kalyan- Ulhasnagar-Ambernath-Badlapur-Neral-Kashele-Ambivli-Peth-Kothligad (61 km) route. The bikes go only upto Ambivli. However... the road was all potholed and dirty. Would have suited a dirt bike rally. From Neral to Kashele is awesome with the Wakas bridge in between and some lovely green field and all the farmhouses.

The climb from Ambivli was a bit tiring with all of us now hitting thirties and hardly exercising. In Peth we met Sawant who provides lunch and accommodation for trekkers.

We met a group of young boys who introduced us to their delicacy, the core of the stem of a Banana plant. did not look appetizing to eat, but was refreshingly tasty. Now we know what to eat if lost in the woods.

Nothing had prepared me for Kothligad. I had expected it to be a run of the mill fort. But the carved steps in the rock were breathtaking. They are also so well preserved that you can imagine yourself going a thousand years back into history and imagining how life must have been than.

We met some BARC guys who told us of a route from Peth to Bhimashankar. I can't understand why Bhimashankar has to figure in the list of "faadu treks" Ahupe Bhimashankar brings back terrible memories of fatigue and bruised groins. This one seemed equally bad. It has been put on the agenda, but I doubt we will do it before Ajit comes back into trekking, ( he has been recently married and hence he has been missing a lot of action... experience tells us that he will return in six to eight months)

On the top we met some Crest guys. Funny... earlier we used to meet a lot of IT guys.. now guys from animation also seem to have a lot of free time. Lots of funny events.. we saw a huge snake and it dissappeared before anybody could flip out a camera. Sachin's D40 had a drop of water drop on it in the cave, much to Sachins' chagrin. We found a Nikon D40 lens cover on our way back only to find out later that it did not belong to Sachin. Perhaps it was those BARC guys.

Sachin suggested we go back by the Ambivli-Kashele-Mhasa-Murbad-Kalyan route which is slightly longer. The route is amazing but it was night and we hardly got to see anything other than what was visible in the headlight. Chaitanya had me switch off the headlight a few times because he wanted to see the fireflies. The road is a billion times better than the route we took in the morning. Total kilometrage was 138 km.

Sachin showed us the route that goes to Siddhagad and I think our next bike trek will be there. My bike is past its run in kilometrage and now I can ride it no hold barred.

Old Friends

As you move through life, you meet so many people. Some leave a lasting impression on your mind. I was fortunate to work with some really talented people while I was working in Waterford. I had lost contact with many of them. However thanks to help from Sachin, I now have links to all their blogs. Such awesome work. Keeps me on the ground and reminds me that I have a lot to learn.
Take some time to go through their blogs listed on the right. Jeff Davis, Juliann Law, Seth Hippen and Nate Baertsch. Thanks guys for the inspiration.

Hero Honda CBZ Xtreme

Bought a new bike. The Hero Honda CBZ Xtreme. All I can say is... its awesome. Here it is standing in front of Kalyan Caves.

MS Paint : The latest in Computer Graphics

After a long time, stumbled upon a genuinely funny clip on Youtube. Enjoy the latest in Computer Graphics MS Paint.

Chubbchubbs Save Xmas released

Finally the ChubbChubbs Saves Xmas project is done. 4 weeks of days and nights in the studio. It was released on 8th August in US in 500 theaters with the Cuba Gooding Jr. comedy Daddy Day Camp.(Press Release) However, The main movie has not received rave reviews Funnily there was more expectations from the short. Thankfully, it seems that the short was liked more than the movie. We are not sure if our team will be credited. The comment at the end of this page isn't very encouraging. But overall it was a great experience handling lighting for the entire project with such a short deadline. Thankfully it will be released with the Surf's Up DVD this October. Do try to catch it. Its reasonably funny. If it gets released online I will post the clip here.