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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

University of Essex vs. University of East Anglia.

40 Matches. 800 Participants. Two Universities. One Winner.

Derby Day is a huge sports event held once a year between the University of Essex and University of East Anglia. The event is held at both the universities alternating every year. This year, it was held here at Essex and all the participants from East Anglia came down here.

I was assigned to photograph all the hockey matches but ended up taking photographs of a majority of the events. The first hockey match was the mens and kicked off at 11AM. Essex won with a spectacular score of 8 - 3. This was followed by the womens hockey at 1PM which Essex lost but up a great fight and managed to get a decent score of 4 -2 even though East Anglia’s Women Hockey team was three leagues above ours. The final hockey match of the day was the mixed match and was quite entertaining. It was a very light hearted match and you could see that most of the players were having fun. We won this match too with an excellent score of 9 - 6.

In between all these matches and during the half times, I went over to several other matches to take a look at the scores and also to snap some photographs. One of the first ones I saw was American Football/Rugby which was quite exciting with a lot of action in the match and a huge crowd cheering them on. They won with a decent lead and while they were celebrating their victory, I headed down to the football fields and got a quick photo of the Womens Football team. I was running out of space in my camera so I came back to my room to upload the photos on to the computer and also made myself a simple lunch.

After that, I went down to the Sports Centre and got photographs of the womens volleyball which we unfortunately lost by a rather small margin. Once the volleyball got over, I went back to the football field where there were 2 mens football matches going on simultaneously on adjacent pitches. Both the matches were quite good and had a large supporting crowd who kept the matches alive. The teams managed to win one match and draw the other one.

We had a quick stop at Womens Netball and after a couple of photos, took a break and went down to the bar. We got ourselves a free meal each since we were volunteering to help out with Derby Day. After the meal, I headed downstairs into Sub Zero to watch boxing. The audience for boxing was beyond what I’d imagined and the sound of the cheering could be heard all the way to the top. The fights were a bit bloody but still very enthralling as could be seen by the roaring sound of the audience every time a powerful punch was thrown.

I came back to the flat for a hurried meal and went back to the Sports Centre for cheer leading which was pretty good, I must say. It was one of the final event of the day with only mens basketball remaining. As of now, I think Essex should have won Derby Day but we cant be sure until the final results come out. However, I do expect Essex to win since we won a majority of the sports including Athletics, Horse riding, Pool, Cricket, Basketball, etc and the scores when I last saw them were about 17 - 11 to Essex.

Photographs are being processed right now, I shall upload them as soon as I can.

Update - I have received confirmation that Essex has indeed won the Derby Title with a final score of 21 - 18.

Update 2 - I have uploaded the best photographs from the events, you can view all of them here.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Two Words - Mind-Blowing!

I went for Gliding today, and we spent almost the whole day at the airfield. After a very small intro talk to the basics of the various parts of the glider, we were ready to fly. I was the second person to fly, and after seeing the first glider go flying into the air, I was quite anxious to try it out.

The gliders are propelled into the air by means of a cable attached to a winch, and once airborne, the cable is released. The time spent on land is hardly any time at all, the glider is almost instantly in the air and in a few seconds, at a steady altitude of more than 1000 feet. The feeling you experience in those initial moments is something that words cant describe, its just amazing.

On the first flight, I was run through the basics, and I was given control of the glider for about a minute or so. The glider was very responsive even to the slightest movement of the control joystick and pedals. It was fun having the whole glider under my control, I played around for sometime before the instructor took control again. The second flight was exclusively for taking photographs so I was happy clicking away to glory while we did a good round of the whole airfield.

I took a break after the second flight, and had lunch before the third and final flight. The third one started off like the others but once we stabilized, the instructor asked me ‘Do you want to have some fun?’, and I think I said ‘yes’ because right after that, he said ‘Okay, hold on tight’ and nosedived. We were at around 100 knots, which is about 140 miles an hour, rushing towards the ground when he suddenly pulled out of the dive and took a steep left turn. The turn continued into a circle, with the left wing facing the ground, and the glider was at a right angle to the horizon. It felt totally crazy but great at the same time. After landing, the instructor told me that we were facing around 4.5Gs during that crazy maneuver.

This was all in an army base, I managed to get quite a few good photographs of the place and the gliding and the great sunset. I had a wonderful experience, I’m already looking forward to the next gliding trip.

I’m feeling tired now so I’ll upload the photographs tomorrow.

UPDATE - I have uploaded the photographs and you can view them here.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

We had tryouts for the football team today. And for the tryouts, the put us all into teams and we played matches. And to be perfectly, I had never played so much football continuously all my life. I played from approximately 2 hours which drained our every single molecule of energy from my body. And the worst part was that I wasnt even that good at the game, I barely managed to play satisfactorily. And the game was also quite intense and serious while I was looking for something more casual and fun. After the 2 hours, I decided that I cant play such dedicated football and should probably try out the other sports or just play some casual football here and there.

We didnt do much today, time flew by without us realizing it. I organized my timetables for the lectures and classes on Google Calender along with SMS alerts, which is pretty useful. We only have about 7 hours of lectures the coming week, and the week after that will have classes too which will make a fuller timetable. I also took my 1000th photograph with the new camera yesterday, and it is certainly a pleasure to take photos with the camera.

The internet speed here is mind boggling fast and I’ve been watching several videos on YouTube over the past few days. We had our Freshers Fair yesterday, I only joined a couple of clubs for the time-being but I can join several more online throughout the year depending on my mood.  More updates of life here and photographs coming soon!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

We had the final round of the seniors quiz yesterday. Although we came 2nd in the quiz, we came 4th overall. We had a helluva time in the quiz. 2 answers were pure guesses and we didnt expect any points for them. And congrats to Daman for winning the quiz shield. After that, we had Table Tennis in which Nalanda came 3rd. The match for 1st place between Taxila and Vijaynagar was nail biting, but finally Vijaynagar emerged victorious.

We won the Chip Ups shield today, thanks to the spectacular performance by our Juniors. Chess was kinda sad today. Lunch was great today, we had both Veg. and Non Veg on the prefects table. School was okay today, population is decreasing day by day.

News,

33 ways to pimp your mobilephone

Wii’s coolest games

20 things you didnt know about lab accidents

Rumble ball - Flash Game

How to choose a DSLR camera

Amazing Halloween Laptop case mod

How to save a wet cellphone

Six health threats you cant ignore

World’s stupidest sign boards

Sony to give I.O.Us for the PS3 in Japan

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

School was practically dead yesterday. We had a handful of people in the morning and by the end of the day, only 2 people remained in 12C, Fatik and me. Anyways, we had lunch at RV with Vikram and Naveen, and since I was there for the first time, it was new experience and I like food there too.

We had the Kabbadi matches in the evening and boy, they were fun! Nalanda lost both the matches and I played one match only. Vijaynagar beat us although they had only 5 people versus 7 of us. Fatik was probably the happiest person yesterday, with Vijaynagar’s first senior victory. Honestly, I never thought Kabbadi would be as fun as it was. Turns out rolling in the sand and grabbing other people is a great game. True, we didn’t win but I had a helluva time.

I experimented in some Video Editing today but I couldn’t do much since I had other stuff to do. I installed Firefox 2 yesterday and I fell in love with it the moment I first started it. It sports a new look, spell check, newer way of organizing tabs, and whole load of features. Download it here

News,

LED headlights on cars

Why we need Firefox 2 and IE7

Top 10 Bushisms

All Laptops break

The inside of Etch-a-Sketch

Russian wins Google Code Jam

Apple to drop the iPod Wheel??

1 dollar or 1 million dollars - Find out if a painting is by a school kid or a world famous artist

Firefox 2 Downloads exceed that of IE7

Adobe’s new SoundBooth Software - For those who cant play any instruments

13 year old kid owned!! - Must Read!!

Top 10 Time wasting games - Flash Games

Six Wii misconceptions

MacBook Pro new iSight indicator - Cool!

Why the Wiimote is not all to the Nintendo Wii

Top 10 reasons to love Win XP - Brings back memories

George Bush speech writer - Hilarious!

Huge collection of Concept Art

Seemingly stupid moves by Apple that were brilliant

Turbo Penguins - Flash Game

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I went and watched the finals of the Hyderabad Polo Season today. It was quite a nice match although the team we expected to win didnt win. It started with a drizzle and we thought it would be washed out but it went on according to schedule. Took lots of pictures. You can find them in the gallery under ‘Photography > Polo‘.

I also played SecondLife today, an online game where you can live a virtual life or a virtual chatting room. Its got very good graphics for an online game. You have to download a 25MB file though. You need a fast internet connection for maximum experience and a good computer too. You can register for SecondLife here. My username is Mjuboy Oxide.

Here is a screenshot:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!