Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve had meetings for the various clubs and societies at University and I was duly elected President of the Gliding Club, President of the Photography Society and Vice President of the Politics Society for the next academic year. I’m quite thrilled by these posts which I have undertaken and I shall do my best to ensure that I help all the societies equally.

I successfully spent the International Shutdown Day without using the computer all the day. I had to take photos of sports for most of the day so it was bit easier to refrain from using the computer since I had something to keep myself occupied with. I did feel the urge to use it in the night after I’d finished all my work but I managed to keep myself under control. And I hadn’t really missed many happenings on the internet as I saw on the next day.

Thanks to a friend, I finally got the chance to play the most coveted game of the year, Grand Theft Auto IV. I played the game on a Xbox 360 but I didn’t really care which I console I played it on as long as I got to play it. My first impressions of the game was the highly improved graphics from the previous games and the physics. Enough cant be said about the new physics engine which is very realistic and gives a whole new feel to the game. We also played the Multiplayer for sometime which was great, we had a bit of a lag but otherwise had a new and exciting experience. I tried to do a mission and I almost completed it when I got killed at the very end. I just cant get used to the dual joystick use in consoles since I prefer PC gaming. Regardless, if you’re going to get only one game this year, make sure it is GTA IV. You can watch a very good 10 minute video review of the game here.

I’ve made some changes to my wishlist, I’ve now amended it to include items that I actually want as opposed to things that would simply be nice to own. Take a look at the updated Wishlist here.

After many months of thinking, I bought myself a Flickr PRO Account yesterday. It offers unlimited upload of photos along with several other incredible features at a very reasonable price of approximately $2 a month. I shall be embedding the Flickr Gallery into the site soon. You can take a look at my Flickr Stream here.

We’ve got exams from next Monday and honestly, I have hardly studied anything. I really hope I get things done soon.

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We had planned for months to watch the movie in its day of release and successfully stuck to the plan by going to the evening show on Friday. I also got a chance to use my free ticket which I got at U2 3D to watch the movie.

The movie was totally awesome, it is one of more ‘manly’ movies I’ve watched in a long time. There werent too many scenes with Iron Man in them but that also kept us anticipating his appearance more. The story is quite good but it could’ve been improved, I guess thats what sequels are for. The story wasnt smooth in its progression, as in, it had moments where everything seemed to happen quickly and times when it was slow. But that was only a small drawback in the movie.

The character of Iron Man/Tony Stark was very well portrayed by Robert Downey Jr., he seemed to fit into the role of Tony Stark/Iron Man perfectly. The humourous side of him combined with a serious business outlook and the charm of a playboy all went well together and the performance by Downey has to be applauded. Iron Man is shown as a ‘cool’ superhero who can pretty much achieve anything he wants.

The quantity of visual effects in the movie is probably less when compared to other modern movies but the quality is impeccable and well executed. The action scenes make you feel right inside the movie and have an excellent soundtrack to back them up.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and will probably watch it again given the chance. And also make sure you stay right upto the very end of all the credits for a scene with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Tony Stark. The movie gets 8.75/10.

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I went Gliding yesterday after more than a month. I’d forgotten how much fun it is to glide and had some very enjoyable flights yesterday. The weather has improved which made the whole experience more pleasurable and we had a great day out at the airfield.

GTA IV comes out in less than 2 days. I wasnt really anticipating the release of the game that much since I’m not as interested in games as I was 2 years ago when San Andreas came out. However, I did want to try out the game just once to see how it is and if there is enough improvement as has been publicised. And yesterday, I read IGN’s review of the game and they gave it a perfect score of 10 and called it ‘One of the best games ever’. I also watched the gameplay videos which are totally awesome. And some of my friends over at GTAGaming got invited for all expenses paid trip to New York by Rockstar Games to have a sneak preview of GTA IV, you can read about their exciting experience here. These events have reinstated my interest in the game and I look forward to release. You can see a countdown to the release of the game here.

I got a PC Sync Extension cable for my cameras flash so that I can fire both of my flash simultaneously indoors, I have taken some exciting photos with some new techniques and you can view some of these on my Flickr Stream and my 365 Day Project. I can also use my flash outdoors now, using the cable and I’ve been experimenting to get unique shots which can be seen in the links above.

I had an Economics Test a couple of days which went fairly well. My exams start on May 12th and ending on May 30th. I also got the result of my Politics Essay and I was quite happy with it as was my teacher.

In order to make my domain more ‘UK-friendly’, I have now redirected my previous derelict website and domain name - Cozmonite.com, to this site so that now anyone who visits that domain can click a link to visit this site which is my primary website.

And I have some big plans about the photo gallery which I shall try and implement soon so that it will be easier to view photos here.

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Term starts tomorrow, the past literally whizzed past me. I didnt do anything majorly productive over the last week although I did manage to get some stuff done which I had been wanting to do for a long time.

My dad came to visit me over the weekend which was great, I got to spend some quality time with him, talk about random stuff like the good ol’ days, it was felt nice to meet him after 4 months. Today’s photo of the 365 Day Project is a dedication to him.

I went to London on Thursday and spent about 12 hours there, taking some photos a majority of the time. I was helping a friend out with her project. The photos came out amazing and I shall be uploading them very soon.

International Shutdown Day is back with a bang this year, and it is the 3rd of May 2008 which will be the day that people all over the world shutdown their computers. It is an optional event, as always but I hope there will be more participation this year. I successfully managed it last year and it was quite refreshing to see how many things one can achieve sans the computer. I personally feel that its something everyone should atleast try to see whether they can achieve it or not. Getting addicted to computers is probably not the best thing that can happen to you and this is like a simple sort of test for that.

Some interesting news around the world,

A mouse at the University of Iowa successfully managed to navigate a maze in less than 30 seconds, on which scientists had spent more than a year to construct. I have to say that I were one of those scientists, I would pissed as hell right now.

And some good news for all bloggers, Britannica has said that it will offer its online version for free to anyone who can prove that they publish regularly on the internet and this includes bloggers, webmasters and writers. If you are one of the above, you can submit this form to them and if approved, you can avail this free service for a year.

For all of those who have struggled to solve the Rubik’s cube, fear not for Gizmodo has put up up a 6 step (yes, you read that right, only 6 steps) guide to solving the Rubik’s cube. Take a look at it here.

The most anticipated game of the year, GTA IV, has gone gold and the copies of the game have started shipping to retailers. The game releases on the 29th of April for the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

Sony always manages to make innovative and unique ads and they’ve proved their skill once again by making an ad in Miami by filling the city with foam. They had to custom make the world’s largest foam machine for this advertisement for their line of digital cameras. You can watch the ad and its making here.

And in somewhat sad news, the Aston Martin used by James Bond in the 007 movies has crashed into a lake by accident after the driver lost control in the rain while delivering it to the shooting area.

And thats it for now, more photos coming up soon!

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After 3 weeks of traveling, I am finally back at University. It feels pretty good to be back at a place which I can call home for the time being.

I spent the last day at Oxford walking around the city and visiting several places. I went to the University Church and climbed up to the tower from where I had a great view of the spires of the city. Apart from that, I visited many colleges including Trinity College, Magdalen College and walked around their campus and got a feel of their atmospheres. I also went for a very informative visit to the Bodleian Library which is one of the biggest libraries in England receiving about 5000 new publications every week! The library also happened to be used for some scenes in the Harry Potter movies and the ground floor was used as the infirmary in the movies.

Blackwells was my next stop, being one of the largest bookshops I’ve ever been too. Its pretty huge and has every book you can think of. I spent a good amount of time pondering over random books there. I went to the Ashmolean Museum after that, and it had free entry which was a good thing. However, as with all museums, it had boring parts and exciting parts. Unfortunately for me, about half of the museum was shut due to renovation work being carried out and I have reason to believe that the sections that were closed would’ve had the interesting bits since the rest of the museum was relatively boring. It was filled with the usual Egyptian relics, Italian statues, etc, etc and honestly, I’ve had enough of these.

I spent less than 24 hours in Nottingham but managed to get across to the main places even though it was raining and hailing on and off throughout the day. I visited the caves of Nottingham which was quite interesting and presented in an excellent manner by a man who dressed up in costumes pertaining to the time period of the caves. The Nottingham Castle, although not very big, was a nice place. It had a really good museum, which was definitely better than the Ashmolean even though a lot smaller. I spent a lot more time in there looking at things which were displayed in innovative way designed to catch the attention of the viewer. They also had a special Robin Hood exhibition which was once again, very well exhibited in new and interesting ways.

I got back to Essex yesterday evening and it felt great to get back. I have one week of relative freedom ahead. I have updated the 365 Day Project so make sure you take a look through the album. And after this great trip, I have decided that my favourite holidays are ones by the sea or ocean. Listening to the sea and watching the waves is something I can sit and so forever. I shall upload the photos of the trip soon!

Update - I have uploaded photos from the vacation onto my Flickr page. You can check them out here. I shall be adding more soon.

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I got back from Seaton last Sunday and have been able to access the internet on my laptop today only. Seaton was great, we walked to several places around the coast including Sidmouth, Beer, Lyme Regis, etc. Got lots of great photographs which I shall upload once I get back to University. I spent the last 4 days in North Dorset visting several historic locations. We went to the Stonehenge which was not as impressive as I expected it to be although it was still quite nice. We went for a nice long walk in the Stourhead Gardens which were very beautiful and had a great time with my friends there. We also saw one of the locations for a scene in the movie ‘Pride and Prejudice’ there. We visited Old Wardour castle after that which was a lot better inside than it appeared from the outside. It was also one of the locations for the movie ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’. We spent a considerable amount of time looking around the place and had a lot of fun.

I spent my first April Fools Day away from my family, it probably sounds funny to you but was quite emotional for me since my dad always used to fool me on the morning of every single April Fools day, and I really missed him.

I arrived in Oxford today morning and I went for a tour bus ride to get a general idea of the whole place. After that, I got off the bus and walked around half the city and it took lesser time than I imagined. The city is very beautiful and has a very authentic English feel to it. It has a lot of people wandering around, a majority of who appeared to be students of the University. I saw most of the important places to visit in the city today and will probably visit the rest tomorrow which will be my last day here.

I will be able to update the 365 Day Project only after I get back to University due to various technical problems. I sincerely apologize for the delay caused.

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The last few days have been relatively uneventful when compared to the first few days here.  We walked to Old Harry’s Rocks a couple of days ago. It was a very tiring walk over extremely steep cliffs and hills and by the time we got to the top, we were really exhausted. It took us a good 15 minutes of lying in the grass before we could start walking again. While walking, I took some occasional pauses and during these pauses, it felt like time had stopped. With the wind blowing through my hair and having absolutely no sound except for the whoosing of the wind, I found out what the sound of silence is like. We had to walk for another 30 minutes before got to the tip of the rocks. The view from there was quite nice and I spent a little while taking lots of photographs.We went down to the South Beach after that and had a late lunch at a small open air cafe there. After the meal, we spent about 45 minutes playing around as we waited for the bus back.

We went to the lighthouse near Durlston yesterday and several places along the way. It was raining every now and then and was quite windy and wasnt the best weather for a walk but we still had fun. The sea was wild and we couldnt feel the time fly while watching the waves thrashing and smashing  against the rocks.

I bought 2 cameras yesterday, both of them were a bargain so I grabbed the offers. One of them is a 110 film camera called ‘Hanimex Loadmatic’. I’ve managed to find some online sellers of the 110 Film cartridges but they seem to be more expensive than what I paid for the camera. The other one, is a Cosina CSM with a Cosinon 50mm f/1.7 M42 Mount Lens. It has a split image focusing screen and is completely manual with a manual aperture ring and provides for a totally new and interesting experience. I plan on processing the film tomorrow to see how the images have turned out and I hope they come out alright.

I went to Wareham today and spent a couple of hours randomly walking around town and taking photographs as usual. I sat by the river for a considerable amount of time watching the ducks swim by and people fishing. There was a calm breeze and it felt like bliss to sit there and enjoy the atmosphere. I couldnt feel the time pass by, but the bus screeching next to me reminded me that it was time to get home. Once I got back, I sat by the beach for sometime enjoying the cool breeze and slowly realized that it was 7pm but still bright due to the Daylight Savings time change today.

We’ll be leaving tomorrow for Seaton and will be staying in a Caravan. We most probably will not have any internet connectivity there and therefore, I shall update my 365 Day Project only after I get back which is next Sunday.

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I got up for sunrise for the past 2 days so that I could get some photos of the sun by the sea. The sunrise day before yesterday was not that great since it was cloudy but I managed to get some good long exposure shots of the rocks on the beach. Yesterday’s sunrise was simply spectacular and I had a couple of friends who accompanied me so it was a fun experience and I also managed to get several great photographs.

Day before yesterday, we had a nice long walk to Durlston through Townsend which had a wonderful view of the town and its surroundings. We had lunch at ‘The Lookout Cafe‘ and enjoyed the panoramic view of the sea it offered. After this, there was a slight drizzle but we walked on and continued to Peveril Point which literally stretches out into the sea and is the farthest point you can go out towards the sea. We spent a considerable amount of time there walking over the rocks and by the cliffs. Following this, we had fish and chips by the seaside and then had fun at the local arcade playing 4-player Air Hockey after which we walked home.

Yesterday, we sat around for a few hours at Peveril Point watching the sunrise. We felt hungry on the way back home so we stopped for breakfast at the only cafe that was open at 8 in the morning. In the afternoon, we had a slightly tiring but fun 2 hour walk to Corfe Castle. Before going to the castle, we had 3 course lunch at a tea room next to the castle. We went for a easter egg hunt at The Model Village after lunch where we managed to find 9 eggs out of a total of 11 but still got a cream egg each as a reward.

The Model Village had a 1:20 scale model of the entire village of Corfe including the castle and all the models were very precise and exquisite. It was so detailed that it had a model of the model of the castle. We spent a bit too much time at the model village since we didnt have time to get a good look at the Corfe Castle but can probably go there another time. After that, we got the Swanage Railway Steam Train back home and was quite fun. The journey was about 20 minutes to our station and once we got out, we played with an Aerobie (a Frisbee-like ring) all the way home across several fields and it felt great to play like a kid again.

The trip has been great so far and we’ve got lots of exciting things planned for the upcoming week.

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We arrived at Bournemouth Station at about 4 yesterday evening, we then had a 40 minute drive to Swanage. The most exciting part of the drive was the fact that it snowed for about 10 minutes. I was quite satisfied with witnessing this brief but heavy snow but I recently got news that there was heavy snow at the University which makes me slightly bad that I left there early and also slightly envious of the people who were there. I saw some photographs of the snow there, and it looks like that they’ve had plenty of snow.

Coming back to local news, we went to a local pub last night to watch a band called ‘Lady Winwoods Maggots‘ who did covers of classic rock songs and were quite good. And even though the place was small, it had a nice atmosphere and we could enjoy the music.

I got my first proper view of the sea today morning from my windows and it looked absolutely fantastic! We spent most of morning lazing around and went out to a pub for lunch. After lunch, we had a long walk by the beach. The sky was great and I got some really good photographs but I shall be uploading them only after I get back to Essex.

The place is really beautiful and I could spend hours sitting and admiring the various sights. It has a certain charm to it that Essex lacks. I’ve fallen in love Dorset and its going to take a 100 wild horses to drag me to back to University from this beautiful abode. We still have a lot more sightseeing to do in the coming week and I think it would be safe to assume that all of them will be equally, if not more beautiful.

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Last week has been quite hectic with essays to give in, last minute paper work to be done, etc, before leaving for the Easter break. We have one solid month of vacation which is pretty good although can also be a reason for boredom. I, however, will most probably manage to rid the boredom since I will travelling to different places around the United Kingdom over the next 2-3 weeks.

I had to write and submit a 2500 word essay for Politics which was okay. I got the results for my Economic Analysis test and Intro to Economics assignment results and I got 99 and 72 respectively. I had to attend several society annual general meetings since it was the end of term. I was elected to the position of Vice President for the Politics Society for next year.

After a bit of a hassle, I received my printer yesterday. It is a Canon Selpy CP 330 and is truly portable in the way that it has a battery and can be used to print directly from the camera wherever you are. Its quite compact and is pretty fast too. It is a Dye Sub printer and uses a thermal technology to print instead of inks which is what makes it portable. It can print upto 4*6 which I think is enough for quick prints. The print quality is excellent too, with vivid colors and sharpness.  And on a side note, I have to thank ebuyer.com for their excellent service since they collected the first faulty printer I received and sent me a new one the next day.

I watched a couple of movies, ‘The Fifth Element‘ and ‘A Scanner Darkly‘ and both have their own positive and negative points. ‘The Fifth Element‘ had a pretty crazy storyline but I still liked it a lot, it had a good blend of Sci fi and comedy which is something you dont see often. And with Bruce Willis added to that, there is now way it can go wrong. ‘A Scanner Darkly‘ had some really amazing visuals, great work by the animators. They had to edit each frame of the movie individually and it must have take a lot of effort and dedication to do it. I cant say I liked the story too much though, it was okay, but a bit too weird for my liking. ‘The Fifth Element‘ is a must watch for any Bruce Willis or Sci Fi fan while people who like movies with a new feel will enjoy ‘A Scanner Darkly‘.

University life has been good the past term and probably better than the first term since I’d met so many more people and was involved in several activities. I’m looking forward to the vacation, one, for the break (deserved or not) and two, for the vast photographic opportunities.

Have a Good Friday and Great Easter!

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