I went to school today and finally got my Transfer Certificate, I am now no longer a student of The Hyderabad Public School. It was a sad moment, leaving my caretaker of 9 years and moving on with my life. After spending a few precious moments in school, I left, with heavy thoughts.

While coming back home from school, I looked out and realized that I would be leaving all this behind tomorrow. Every person who walked on the road, every building that I passed by, every bus that moved like  it could move no more, everything which had  I had taken for granted as a part of my everyday life, all of these seemed so significant today. They were all an inconspicuous part of the society which had made me the person I am today. The Kishor Krishnamoorthi you know today, is not a result of his own efforts but rather a product of the wonderful city of Hyderabad.

And tomorrow, I will be parting with this beautiful city which has provided with delicious Biryani whenever I felt like it, great friends who have been with me during good and bad times and most of all, it has given me a mind blowing experience which I could not have achieved anywhere else in the world.

I will be departing for London tomorrow night where I will pursue my BA Economics and Politics course from the prestigious University of Essex for the next 3 years. I will leave my motherland behind in search of greener pastures, and I hope that this education will help me serve my country better and also make me a better human being.

I will miss my friends, Sambhav, Isha and Krutika, who were always ready to spend time with me regardless of their personal situation, Aravind, who laughed heartily at all my jokes, no matter how lame they were, Bhagyalakshmi, who I rarely met but had interesting MSN convos, Suren, who always amazed us with his talk, although we rarely understood it, and of course, Fatik, who was always there for me for the past 9 years, and provided me with enormous moral support. Forgive me if I have forgotten to mention your name but also keep in mind that I’m in a confusing situation right now since I have lots of last minute work to do.

I also thank everyone who has been a part of my life in Hyderabad for supporting me in my ventures and making my life a little bit better everyday.

PS - My sincere apologies for not posting on the site for so long but I’ve been quite busy getting ready to leave for London.

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I spent almost the full day backing up all my data. And I finally ran out of backup space after lunch. Fortunately, there was only about 10GB which needed backing up so I guess I’ll write them onto DVDs tomorrow. But in the future, I’ll need to get more space. And once I get a DSLR, I’ll definitely need more space.

And while the backing up was going on, I thought I’ll do something useful instead of staring at the files flying from one folder to another. So I was doing some research on cameras as usual but today I learnt some really things. For starters, I learnt how Autofocus works, something I had always wanted to know and several other interesting things. If anyone ever feels bored, go to Wikipedia and start reading any topic about cameras and photography and you’ll surely get hooked onto it.

And News, after a long time,

Philanthropist Has Given Away an Estimated $4 Billion

PS3 Controller Rumbles at the Tokyo Game Show

15 Sure ways to get Banned from K-Mart

USB 3.0 coming, will increase transfer speeds tenfold

57 Things We Know From Playing Video Games

Hilarious Essay Written While High

Hitler’s secret Indian army

Discovery Channel Taught Thief How to Rob Houses

Chernobyl to be covered in $1.4 billion steel helmet

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Today is the International Talk Like A Pirate Day. I know its pretty pointless but whatever.

Top Ten Pickup lines for use on International Talk Like a Pirate Day

10 . Avast, me proud beauty! Wanna know why my Roger is so Jolly?

9. Have ya ever met a man with a real yardarm?

8. Come on up and see me urchins.

7. Yes, that is a hornpipe in my pocket and I am happy to see you.

6. I’d love to drop anchor in your lagoon.

5. Pardon me, but would ya mind if fired me cannon through your porthole?

4. How’d you like to scrape the barnacles off of me rudder?

3. Ya know, darlin’, I’m 97 percent chum free.

2. Well blow me down?

And the number one pickup line for use on International Talk Like a Pirate Day is …

1. Prepare to be boarded.

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The first week of my 365 Day Project went quite smoothly. I faced a few difficulties for ideas in the morning of each day, but once the day progressed, something or the other cropped up and provided for a good photograph.

Here is a summary of all the photographs, you can click the thumbnails to view the full size photographs and a description of each one.

• Day Eight 
• Day Seven 
• Day Six 
• Day Five
• Day Four 
• Day Three 
• Day Two 
• Day One

And in other unrelated news, I successfully finished Max Payne 2 again.

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After following several discussions on various forums about Max Payne, I decided that its about time I played the game again. Unfortunately, my CDs were scratched so much that my PC refused to read them, even after many repeated tries. And then, I remembered that I had installed the game on my old PC and since my old PC was still lying around, I thought that I’ll be able to retrieve the game from it.

The PC ran perfectly well, a little slow, but acceptable, even though it had been almost a year since I last used it. I was able to locate the game and successfully copy all the data on to my Portable Hard Disk, and it ran perfectly on my computer.

I’m already halfway through the game, and I’m looking forward to playing the ‘Hard-Boiled’ version once I finish it. Max Payne is an epic character, I wish that they would make Max Payne 3.

I met up with some old friends yesterday after a long time, we had quite a good time. Life has been relatively good in the past week, I haven’t had much to do except for a few things here and there.

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Inspired by several blogs and photographers, I decided to venture into the 365 Day Project, a project in which people vow to take atleast one photograph everyday. I’ve modified it slightly to fit my purpose since I already take an average of around 25 - 50 photographs everyday. My objective is to take one good photograph everyday. The subject can be anything from things I do, people I meet, places I go but the photograph should be good and expressive rather than just an average everyday picture. It sounds like an easy task right now and I hope it remains that way but usually, things that look simple have this bad habit of turning into a tough task.

I will be starting from today, the 9th of September 2007 on this gargantuan task and hopefully, will finish it by the 9th of September 2008. No specific reason for choosing this date, I just felt that its better to start today when I’m excited about it rather than postpone it to a nice date, only to lose interest.

I have created a new album in my gallery specifically for this purpose, I will updating this album daily with a new photograph and description. You can view this album here. I will probably be posting every weekly on the main page about the photographs. And along with these weekly posts, I will also be posting tips for taking better photographs.

I also invite everyone, photographer or not, to join me in this exciting venture as this will not only help you maintain a visual record of your life and activities but also help you improve your photography skills in the process. It might seem to be a huge commitment right now but once you get used to the practice, you will not want to stop. In the rare event that you do wish to stop, dont. At the end of 365 days, you will realise that it was worth the effort. Good luck to everyone who wishes to attempt this task!

Updates - I have uploaded the entire 365 Day Project on to Flickr and you can view all the photos in a set here. You can also view a slideshow of the photos here. And to keep updated with the project you can subscribe to this RSS Feed.

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Just updated my wishlist, take a look at it here.

And News,

The First Photograph Ever Taken in 1826

Apple’s iPod Touch gets official

Apple announces the iPod Classic

Apple announces new iPod Nano

Opera legend Pavarotti dies at 71

The World’s Smallest Stuff

Men still go for looks, women for wealth

10 Big Lessons from Little Kids

30 Happiness Tips: Program Your Life for Optimum Enjoyment

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism: A Word For Describing Long Words

Did the Soviets really build a “doomsday machine”?

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My passion for photography is something that everyone who is around me will know about, but how did it start in the first place? Few people know that I was encouraged by my father to take up photography as a hobby but how did my father get interested in photography?

I found the answer to this question a few days ago when I found an old Russian Camera and two books on photography. All of them were around 25 - 30 years old, and they belonged to my father.

Upon further research, I found out that the camera was a 35mm rangefinder called Zorki manufactured at the Krasnogorsk Mechanical Factory in the Soviet Union between 1948 and 1978. The particular model which I had was the Zorki 4 which was first released in 1956 and over 2 million units were produced. The Zorki 4 was the most successful Zorki and has a reputation as one of the best Russian cameras although the self-timer and slow shutter speeds were unreliable.

The camera isn’t functioning perfectly right now. When I press the shutter button, the shutter plane moves halfway through and stops and the moves slowly. The self-timer works perfectly, and the camera is entirely mechanical, it doesn’t require batteries to function. The lens is quite remarkable too, with a focal length of 50mm and fast aperture of f/2.

I hoped that the camera might be worth something given its antique status but I was disappointed to find out that it’s not worth more than 75$ because there are around 1.7 Million pieces in existence even today. Well, maybe after a few more years, it might be worth something more.

The books are the best photography books I’ve ever read. The Digital Photography Books you get in the shops today don’t even give a quarter of the information in these books. And since these books were written with Film Cameras in mind, its interesting to know the real origin of some of the principles of digital photography today. The books have certainly taught be a great deal of the technical details and basics of photography.

 The first book is The Focalguide to Cameras and the second one is The Focalguide to Photographing People.

Click the thumbnails for fullsize images.

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