I’ve been ardently following the semi-finals of Britain’s got talent over the past week along with my friends. One hour, every night for 5 days lead to a lot of swearing at the TV, swearing at each other and making fun of innumerable auditions. Its been good fun and the finals of the show were held on Saturday.

As always, all of us had our favourites, the people who we wanted to win. My personal favourites were ‘Signature’ a dance group of two Indians, who had a combined style of Michael Jackson and Bhangra which proved very effective and popular. I quite liked their style and the fact that they were Indians was a huge plus point. The other group who I liked was ‘Escala’, a troupe of 4 beautiful girls who played the violin in a pretty spectacular way.

I watched intently to see who the winner would be, and when they had cut down the participants from 10 to 3, only one of my favourites remained, Signature. I cant say I really liked the other 2 of the final 3 so I hoped that Signature would win. Then, when only 2 remained, the final winner was to be announced. However, as fate would have it, Signature did not win, and the winner was this 14 year old kid named George Sampson who was quite good at his rain dance act. I was shocked that Signature did not win, probably along with thousands of others who would’ve been heartbroken.

I am very proud of Signature, for the tremendous efforts that they would have put into their dance, for the unique style that they created, for making all Indians proud, and for not giving up without a fight. I’m sure that they will have a bright future ahead of them.

You can watch the first audition of Signature here, their performance in the semi-finals here and their dazzling finale here.

And for those who’ve already watched the audition and want to listen to the mix they used, you can listen to it here, its called Nachna Onda Nei by Tigerstyle with Kaka Bhania.

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After having bought myself a Flickr PRO Account a couple of weeks ago, I decided to upload my 365 Day Project to Flickr so that I can share it with the Flickr community. You can view all the photos in a set here and view a slide-show of the photos here. And you can now keep updated with the photo of the day by subscribing to this exclusive RSS Feed which will notify you when a photo is uploaded onto the set on Flickr.

I came across this highly amusing image of why you shouldnt piss off a engineer, take a look at it yourself here.

Another very witty article I read was about the 8 different types of annoying people you’ll find in Starbucks. I found the list to be quite accurate, read the article here to see if it reminds you of a trip to Starbucks.

People just come up with all sorts of crazy but innovative ideas these days. This list of the most awesome business card designs I have ever seen, reinforces that statement.

Viral marketing is the latest thing for all companies these days, Levis has done quite a good marketing campaign for its jeans with this strange and funny video of guys jumping into jeans.

For all those ardent web designers out there, here is a compilation of useful resources for both experienced and amateur web developers.

If you have vertigo, this photo is probably not for you. Its a photograph of the view from the top of what is currently the world’s tallest structure, the Burj Dubai.

Barack Obama seems to gaining more and more popular support day by day, and his increase in security proves it. Click here to view some amazing photographs of Barack Obama’s Security.

Luigi Colani has designed some of the most extravagant and ridiculous designs which have to be seen to believed. Take a look at them here.

And for the funniest story of the week, officials at Japan’s Narita airport have lost 142gms of cannabis after having placed it in a random passenger’s bag to test their security dogs. As fate may have it, the dogs were not able to sniff out the drugs and the officer has forgotten which bag he put it in.

And thats all for now folks!

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3 exams finished, only 1 more left and I’ve got a week till that one so I’ve got some freedom till then. My Politics exam went on well but the real kicker is the Statistics exam which was really good considering the fact that I had only one to study for it, the subject that I dislike the most.

I’ve been getting lots of things done over the past week, things that I’d wanted to get done for a long time so it was good to get all of those off my mind.

I was browsing randomly around a couple of days ago when I came across this article which talked about a man who took a Polaroid everyday for 18 years of his life right upto the day he died. After having tackled about three fourths of my 365 Day Project, I know how demanding it can be on some days to get a photo done. And this is only 257 days in for me, he took photos for 6,697 days from 1979 to 1997. It is quite a remarkable feat and I truly respect for having the determination and courage to go through it for 18 years. Thats more than my age. I have been contemplating undertaking a similar project and I’m still continuing to contemplate it, I havent really made up my mind yet. You can read the article here.

I’ve been reading about some photographers lately, the ones who really inspired me were Michael Muller and Platon. Michael Muller shoots celebrities and promo shots for high profile movies, the latest and most famous one being Iron Man. He has a very impressive portfolio and has done portraits of the some of the most famous celebrities out there.

I felt Platon is a bit more ‘legendary’ than Michael Muller since he is the one who photographed the leader of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin himself, for the cover of TIME Magazine in 2007 and also won the World Press Photo in 2008 for Portraits with that photo.

His interview about the photoshoot is very powerful and he talks about his experience, I feel every photographer should listen to this, to know how it feels to photograph one of the most powerful men on earth. You can watch it here. (Click on 2008 Interviews and then click on Putin’s photo) The interview is about 10 minutes long and definitely worth listening to.

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We had our first exam at University yesterday, Introduction to Economics, which went remarkably well. The exam procedures were more or less the same as school, the only difference being that there were about 400 students in one hall as opposed to about 125 in school. The size didn’t really make much of a difference in the exam but they took a hell a lot of time to collect all the papers at the end. Next exam is next Tuesday, gotta start studying.

I’ve been looking to get a medium format camera recently, because I want to venture out into new forms of photography. After several hours of researching online instead of studying for my exam, I came to the conclusion that for a person who is taking his first step into Medium Format, a folder camera would be ideal since it isn’t very expensive but gives good quality images and is compact when compared to the other alternatives.

I did stumble upon a few Bronicas on Ebay, it was quite tempting to get one, but I had to refrain since they would be an overkill for me and were also slightly expensive. After more hours of hunting, I came across several models of folder cameras such as the Agfa Isolette which seemed to be the most popular and various different versions of the Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta.

Zeiss Ikonta by Ray Pempengco

In order to get a hands-on experience with some of these cameras before buying one, I decided to visit a secondhand camera store in London. So yesterday, right after the exam, I went to London and spent about an hour lost trying to find the store, and I finally managed to find it. I wouldn’t exactly call it a store since they are a mail-order business and don’t have a store front for customers. Its more like a office room filled with all the classic cameras you can dream of. I was initially overwhelmed by the amount of cameras they had in that space and spent a good 10 minutes just looking at the huge collection. The store owners were very friendly and allowed me to handle various cameras. After some drooling and handling of some of the best medium format cameras in the world, I decided that I would get a Zeiss Super Ikonta and if all goes right, I should probably have one with me this time next week. And if anyone is looking to get a classic camera, I suggest you look at their extensive online catalogue, but act quick since they sell like hot cakes.

Here are some links which I found very useful containing more information about the world of Medium Format Cameras -

Introduction to Medium Format Photography - Ken Rockwell

Medium Format Guide - Cameras.co.uk

Choosing a Medium Format Camera - Philip Greenspun, Photo.net

Medium Format on a Budget - Peter Williams

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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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A lot of exciting things have been happening around the world recently and I thought I’d share them with you.

Fidel Castro announces retirement after staying in power for 49 years

Musharraf’s rivals win Pakistan election

Its official, Toshiba announces the death of HD-DVD - Blu-Ray wins, and I am quite glad the format war finally got over.

Harvard Site Hacked and Then Leaked on BitTorrent - The Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences website has been hacked and now the content including server backups, full directory strucure, site databases and password files are now leaked on BitTorrent.

Mysteries Of Computer From 65BC Are Solved - A 2,000-year-old mechanical computer salvaged from a Roman shipwreck has astounded scientists who have finally unravelled the secrets of how the sophisticated device works.

The Best Films That Never Won a Best Picture Oscar - I’m happy to say that I’ve seen 2 movies from the list.

Dubai Architecture - Dubai is said to currently have 15-25% of all the world’s cranes. There are more construction workers in Dubai than there are actual citizens.

15 Things Men Say But Don’t Really Mean

Unreleased JFK Assassination Documents Found

20 Things I Wish I Had Known When Starting Out in Life

Kosovo Declares Independence

Seven of the Deadliest Delicacies

5 Common Body Myths Debunked

$14.3M License Plate: Worlds most expensive license plate

The War on Video Games explained [Comic]

27 Worst Pick-up Lines Ever And The Reaction They Get

And thats it for now!

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I finished Half Life 2: Episode Two yesterday. Another epic game by Valve. The story was great, gameplay was great, visuals were excellent, sound was mindblowing, I have absolutely no complaints about this game except for the fact that it was too short. I really feel like playing more of Half Life, so I guess I’ll start playing Half Life 2 again or Episode One.

On a sadder note, Indonesia’s former dictator, General Suharto, passed away on Sunday January 27th, aged 86. This may not mean much to you, but it has a sublime effect on me, knowing that I lived in Indonesia during his reign. May his soul rest in peace.

Sometimes, I think that I should get rid of my spectacles and go for contact lens but then this image changed that impression. A reason for all us specs wearers to continue wearing them.

Ever wanted to know what it feels like to pilot the world’s largest commercial airliner? Now you can with this panoramic view of the cockpit of the Airbus A380.

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of one of the most popular toys around the world, Lego. I cant tell you how much I used to play with this as a kid, it’s good to know that it survived for so many years and hope it will continue to do so for the following generations. Google also commemorated this event with a special logo.

And coming to the local news, a Bugatti Veyron was given a parking ticket in downtown Manchester and a crowd supposedly cheered while a parking warden wrote him the ticket.

In the Tech section, an insider source has revealed information that the 80GB PS3 model will be discontinued, paving way for a 120/160GB model, which will come along with Dualshock 3.

Another exciting yet not very useful tool for webmasters is this service which finds out other websites which are hosted on the same server as yours by performing a reverse IP domain check. I tried it myself and found out that discount-oriental-area-rugs.com, papayacoconut.com and meaningfuljewelry.com are hosted on the same server as mine. Give it a try yourself here.

Update : I’ve done some minor updates to the ‘About me‘ page and added new photos to the ‘Me‘ gallery, check them out here!

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Day before yesterday, Apple announced their new Macbook Air, which is supposedly the thinnest laptop ever made, and I must add, one of the most incompetent too. Although it looks quite sleek and fancy, it hasn’t got much power under the hood and as a result, is quite useless for the average daily user. And the price is another shocker, retailing at $1,799, which isnt exactly anyone’s cup of tea. Honestly, I could get a much better laptop for a much cheaper price. And along with the extreme portability, you also get extreme fragility, meaning you have to take much better care of it. I don’t know who their target market is, and who they exactly aim to sell this to, but I also know that it will sell, simply because its from Apple and its claimed to be the worlds thinnest laptop.

Picture this, you’re sitting in a cafe with your Macbook Air, browsing the web, using its wifi and a friend pops up next to you. This is the conversation that I think would happen -

Friend - “Hey man, long time, whats up with you?”

You - “Duuude, Check out my new laptop.”

F - “Wow, that looks pretty sleek.”

Y - “Yea, its the worlds thinnest laptop and it’s from Apple.”

F - “Sounds pretty impressive, what can it do?”

Y - “Well, for starters, its got a battery life of 5 hours with everything running.”

F - “Thats amazing, now I can watch 2 entire DVDs without needing to recharge.”

Y - “Ahem, it hasn’t got a DVD drive, so you cannot play any discs.”

F - “Maybe I can plug in my external drive and watch movies”

Y - “You can, but it only has a mono speaker so you wont have the best sound.”

F - “That sucks, so what else does it have?”

Y - “Its got a solid 2Gigs of RAM and 1.6Ghz Dual Core processor!”

F - “Neat! That means I can do a great deal of video encoding on it.”

Y - “That might be a possibility, but its only got 144MB of shared video RAM.”

F - “Oh, well, atleast I can browse the internet all over my university now, without needing to lug around my heavy laptop.”

Y - “I hope your university has Wifi all over because this does not have a Ethernet port.”

F - “What the hell? No Ethernet port? Anyways, I guess I can atleast use it to transfer pictures from my camera to my external Hard disk”

Y - “It only has one USB port, so you cannot attach more than a single device at a time.”

F - “I suppose I could run Photoshop on it, to edit my photos.”

Y - “Yea, this baby can run photoshop like a breeze, but the display is only 6-bit so you wont have the best colors.”

F - “Ah, hope you got a good deal on it”

Y - “Actually, I paid $1,799 for it”

F - “Thats a freaking ripoff, anyways, I’ll catch you later, have *cough* fun with your new laptop”

Y - “Wait, it has a built-in camera and multi touch pad and…and……”

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I finally made the ‘Everyday Photographs‘ category today. I’ve uploaded photographs that I took when I went to town today. Make sure you take a look and leave some feedback.

And News, since I dont have anything else to fill this post with.

On Sept 10th 2001 The Pentagon Misplaced 2 Trillion Dollars

TIME Magazine’s 50 Top 10 Lists for 2007

New light gives off 24/7 light for 12 Years w/o electricity

16 Inspirational Portrait Photography Techniques

Indiana Jones 4 Poster Revealed!

101 Reasons Why Hugh Hefner is The Man

Mysterious mammal caught on film

“Very Good If You Need to Write on Paper” - A Pen Review

Scientists Discover How to Make Robots Bounce on Water

Amazing Art on Egg Shell

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