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.
Today is the 58th Republic Day, and we supposedly had French President Nicolas Sarkozy as our guest of honour in Delhi. So, anyways, Happy Republic Day to everyone. I played Portal all night yesterday along with the help of a couple of friends. It was a lot of fun and is definitely a great game. It requires you to use your brain extensively which made it even more exciting. We finished the game after playing for about 4 hours, taking turns for certain parts. It was quite a short game but highly innovative. The game is basically about several puzzles which can be solved using your Portal gun. You progress to the next room after finishing one puzzle. Each puzzle is tougher than the previous one and slowly introduces new elements into the game. At the beginning of the game, you can only shoot blue portals but after a certain level, you can shoot both blue and orange portals. For those who are still confused about the whole concept of Portals, let me explain. You can shoot Portals with your gun and the blue one is connected to the orange one. If you walk through the blue one, you’ll come out of the orange one, which, if used properly, can lead to some very complex and interesting situations. For example, you can shoot a blue one next to you and an orange one at a higher place which you cannot reach by jumping. When you walk through the blue portal next to you, you will come out at the orange one above. If you are still confused, this video should be very helpful, it is the trailer for the game.
The game has a lot of dark and subtle humour which has become very popular all across the gaming society. The final credits song after the game is really hilarious and I feel that everyone should watch it. If you havent played the game, but plan to, then you might not want to watch it since it has some spoilers but if you dont plan to play it, then you must watch this video. I’ve posted it below. And click here to view the lyrics to the song.
I didn’t even realize that it was 2008 last night because I was too busy watching a classic Kamal Hassan movie, ‘Thevar Magan‘. Only once the movie got over, I looked at the clock and realized I had already spent more than an hour in the new year, and it felt like the same ol’ 2007.
I don’t understand why people make such a big fuss about the whole new year concept. Its just another day in your boring life. It doesn’t not make it more exciting, except for the movies on TV. I think its just a huge marketing ploy just to increase sales of all the goods, and cheat the people by giving discounts along with 5012 Terms and Conditions. And New Years Parties, what a rip-off! An outrageous amount of money just to watch random people get drunk and fill your lungs with smoke. I can honestly say that I had a better time yesterday watching the movie at home than I would’ve had if I went out.
2007 had its own positive and negative aspects but when overall, it seems like a pretty good year. It had the formula for a near perfect year, with its own ups and downs, miseries and joys, jokes and insults and I just hope that 2008 turns to be atleast as good as 2007, if not better.
I’ve also done some updates to my wishlist, but these updates would seem insignificant to the common man since they are all about more and better lenses for my camera. If you are camera savvy, please do take a look here for some great lenses and if you are not camera savvy, still take a look here so that you know what to get me for my birthday.
Oh, and for the sake of obligation, I wish all of you a Happy 2008.
I went to the Gliding Club on Saturday night for my first fully fledged English Christmas Dinner. I had a great time there, food was awesome and met lots of new people. I had a taste of how a traditional English dinner was done and it was a new and interesting experience. We spent the night there and sat around talking about completely random things until 4 in the morning. You can see the photos of the event at the Gliding Club website here. Some of the photos were taken by a friend and some were taken by me.
I’ve already started planning my trip back home since I’ll be back in about a week, and I’m really looking forward to getting back home, a) for my family and friends and more importantly, b) for the food.
Also, I’ve decided that uploading a single photograph everyday is not enough to showcase all my photos so I will most probably be creating a separate category called ‘Everyday Photos’ and create sub-categories for each day. At first I was thinking that I should probably utilize the already existing ‘Photography‘ category but then I thought I wouldn’t be bothered to add photographs everyday into individual categories and this would be simpler and easier. The category will have a sub-category for each day with good photographs. These photographs can be anything I take on that day, from my friends, to macros to landscapes. And of course, if there is a special event on a particular day, it will get its own separate category. I know it sounds a little confusing but I plan on creating the categories tonight so once it’s done, it should clear up all the confusion.
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner yesterday, thanks to Ashley and a day early because many people had several other commitments today. And I enjoyed the dinner so much that I completely forgot about my Quantitative Economics test today. Although superficially, it only seems like basic statistics, there’s a lot more to it.
The test went on reasonably good considering that I only studied for 3 hours before it. But I cant relax too much since I have another Economics Assignment to hand in by Monday.
And on the occasion of Thanksgiving, I would like say that I’m thankful to god for giving me the perfect life, with nothing to worry about, my family for always supporting every decision I make and being there for me, my friends from school, with whom I spent some of the best years of my life, my friends at University, without whom life would be empty, and every single person who has been part of my life because without them, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I’m also thankful to Nintendo, Sony, Canon, and U2 for obvious reasons.
And I would like to end this post with LG’s slogan - Life’s good.
The Canon 430EX arrived today, and I must say that it is a quite powerful piece of equipment. I also ordered a set of wireless flash triggers, one of those cheap ones from Ebay. The triggers were activating the flash at random but after placing a piece of aluminium in the right place, everything was alright.
The flash itself is quite big and heavy, with 4 AA batteries. It just fits into my camera bag, and I don’t think I can stuff anything more into that bag. The 430EX definitely gives a professional and impressive look along with the 40D and I felt that it would be quite bulky to carry around. But once I started using the flash, I realized that its worth carrying around that extra weight for its impressive results. You can see all of my photography gear in today’s photograph for the 365 Day Projecthere.
The wireless flash triggers don’t have the greatest of range and I haven’t fully tested them but they’re good enough for my purpose. I’m sure I’ll be able to try out some new lighting techniques with them. My flash and wireless trigger look exactly like this.
I’ve haven’t taken too many photographs using the flash to its full capacity yet but I will be spending lots of time experimenting with it, trying to achieve new and unusual lighting methods.
And I also wish everyone a Happy and Prosperous Diwali!
Today is the 15th of August, 2007. For the rest of the world, its just another Wednesday. But for one nation, the support system of one billion people, today marks the 60th anniversary of a better life, a better nation, of Freedom.
Wishing every single Indian, rich and poor, old and young, know and unknown, a very Happy Independence day, from the bottom of my 17 year old heart.
Thanks to the society for having supported a safe and happy life for one billion citizens for the past 60 years and I hope that India will continue to be one of the happiest nations in World for many years to come.
Holi. The festival of colours. I would’ve made a wallpaper had it not been for my Business Maths exam on Monday. I’ve started preparing and its going on well.
I had printed out some of my best photographs, framed them and put them up in the hall around a fortnight ago. Here’s a picture of them -
I ran a complete virus check on all my 700GB of data, did a full defragmentation and backed up all my data today. So my PC is running relatively better compared to yesterday.
Today is Id-Ul-Fitr and marks the end of the month of Ramzan. Id Mubarak to everyone!
I downloaded Codename Gordon today, its a 2D version of Half Life. Its kinda fun but gets boring quickly. Its a free download via Steam. Get it if you want but its just a toned down 2D side-scroller version of Half Life.
Nothing much happened today, today was a holiday so I just lazed around…….
