2007 - A Round Up

    For a start, this blog kicked off in January 2007 and when it is about to complete an year of posting, i should be more than delighted to have had the patience to maintain this blog. It's hard to fathom the fact that this blog has been active for nearly an year.
    As the year comes to an end, some highs and lows what I observed are mentioned below. It might be a bit long, so I put it in such a way that you can see the titles and choose what to read...

         Lows:

- My Guitar skills: My guitarring has gone down really bad and the amount of effort that I put in is an all time low as I approach the end of the year. The amount of progress that I made in a few months last year was too high and the progress this whole year has been very bad. Maybe it's time I admit that my equipment needs an upgrade and my self learning has reached a saturation point. It's ironical that I am playing guitar at the moment and I am still complaining...

- The Great Electrocution: Can't believe I saw death and escaped. The story of my electrocution spread like electric current all over the college. That happened during my Annual Day rehearsal and I cannot deny that I am lucky to be posting now. I foolishly touched an open extension box and got electrified and my guitar completed the circuit. It was then that my body got stiff and went out of control. I could not see what I was seeing and the last thing I could remember was, "Is this how it is, to be leaving your loved ones?" I don't know how i got that thought, but that was the exact thought I got. And then, I remember tripping. The trip that jerked me and forced my hands to leave the guitar and the box (which were tightly stuck to both my hands). As soon as I crashed to the ground, I came back to life, and started saying, "I am alright, I am fine", though no one asked me... got some weird slashes on my fingers, where the skin got heated and opened up .... can't forget those moments ever ....

- Mini Projects: As usual, our mini project was shelved again. Atleast this time, we made a head start and managed to make a mini model of an aircraft, with movable ailerons and rudder, but then the design was completely off and we failed to make the larger model of it. We invested lots of money in that, and it's history...

- Accidents: Well, 2007 has been a year of accidents. I heard of too many of them on the roads and every place imaginable. Infact, my friend Natarajan had an encounter with an electric hand drill which pulled out a huge chunk of his long hair. He was lucky coz the hand drill was so powerful, it could have pulled the scalp out. No injuries atleast. My eletrocution was another accident. And I heard of so many college students being killed in various cases. Too many to talk about.

- Dogs: What happened to the dogs this time? They all went berserk. For a few months, all I could see on the news was incidents of dogs attacking people madly. Sickening...

- Traffic: This year, I finally got behind the steering of my car, and this year has been one of the worst in terms of traffic snarls. Especially the main road leading towards my house was subjected to some extreme traffic problems because of pipeline laying and other junk. The rest of Hyderabad has seen similar traffic problems. This should be a lesson for all those traffic police out there.

- Terrorism: Aah. Here we go. To talk about terrorism is like encouraging a chatterbox to chat. The talk might go on forever. To cut it short, those blasts in various towns and cities, including the ones in Hyderabad that killed so many people in an instant have confirmed that no place is safe. Not India, not USA, not UK, not Spain, nothing is safe. Maoism, having close ties, takes the numero uno spot of the various problems in India. The Bastar region which was considered one of the most peaceful and beautiful places in India, is now infested with Maoists. There are gun battles almost daily, where many people are killed. The rare tribals don't cooperate and the travel routes for tourists are totally unstable and unreliable. Who knows this better than my bro, Srikar, who had a first-hand experience of this.

- West Ham: This needs a special mention as this is a football team that has managed to defeat Manchester United twice within the same year. I never understood why this happened.

- F1: The 2007 season has been the most controversial one in F1. The reputation is falling fast, and it is supposed to be the most watched sport in the world. The malpractices and Info Exchange cases and a controversy right at the death of the championship, something that could have changed the result altogether, were among those things that painted F1 in black.

         Highs:

- Results: This has been a definite high for, with an average of 81.5%, it's a result that I can cherish. The exams have been horribly bad and the results, the exact opposite.

- iPod: I bought an iPod in September 2007 and it's been one of the best things that I did. It has been my companion during my long and boring bus journeys from home to college and back. And it will still be in the future.

- More Gadgets: Well, I even bought a Canon Camera which taught me so many things about photography. Most of the pics in the blog were taken from my camera. And it wasn't just me. Srikar bought a Zoom G2.1U (truly awesome guitar processor), and an O2 Mobile, Barun Muni bought an iPod classic, Natarajan bought an HTC Touch, and this list might go on forever..

- Ambigrams: I started a weird hobby of making ambigrams which explored the inner creativity in me. This was inspired obviously by Dan Brown's Angels and Demons.

- 7777777: This year was full of 7s. With the date taking a 777 form and being the reason for thousands of celebrations, marriages, concerts, etc. My jersery no. for the soccer team being 77 and Harry Potter 7 being released and many more ...

- Metal India: India suddenly became a hotspot for Heavy Metal artists with Iron Maiden opening India to a Brave New World. This was followed by Sepultura, Aero Smith and many more. Ofcourse it wasn't only heavy metal, there was Shakira, and other Pop, R&B, Hip Hop artists, all finding India a crazy-about-music place.

- My Hobbies: They took an all time high, with my interests ranging widely. Guitar, Music, Soccer, Ambigrams, Photoshop, Drawing, Star-gazing, Photography, Travelling, and many more have all taken my life by storm.

- ACE Untd: My new soccer team which was started this year and I am proud that I designed the logo for it. We learnt a lot of football playing for ACE Untd, and though it is undergoing a crisis at the moment, I am sure it will step out in bright colours.

- Touring: I went for trips to Chattisgarh and to South India, and I truly enjoyed both of them. I captured some good moments and saw places that will stick to my memory. It's been a year of sighseeing for me.

- College: Can't believe this is coming under the Highs section. I had lots of fun in college this year. We had an equal share of academics and enjoyment, and I feel one must live like this. Dedicating life to studies is not a good option and sacrificing studies for life is not one either.


As a whole, this year was a good year for me. A few months went by in blink and a few months were slow. However they were, they were good. This year has definitely been a positive one over the last few years. I just hope 2008 will bring out something better for me.

I found an apt description for the New Year. This is a part of the song Brand New Start by Alter Bridge.

We will make a brand new start
From the pieces of our hearts
The break of day is before us;
Cast your sorrows to the wind
Let the highway take us in
As we escape the disorder


And this is from Rise Today by Alter Bridge again.

Yeah
Oh Yeah,
I want to rise today and change this world.
Yeah
Oh Yeah,
Oh won't you rise today and change this world?

That bring this post to an end. Can't really call it a post. A novel would be a better word. Anyway, it's a adios to 2007 and a hola! to 2008, Happy New Year to all!

ACE Undecided

I know it's been 3 posts since I posted a happy note, and this isn't one either. It all comes down to those Soccer Woes that started with my new semester. Life on the pitch has been miserable as was today's game against the Gunners. That's the team that comprises some good friends of my friend, Yaseen. A very experienced team with players that are highly skilled. My team, ACE Untd, has been having problems ever since we started a string of renovations and changes. They don't seem to be working too well.
    Today's match was a cakewalk for the Gunners. They pulled of a victory with ease. Before the match started, I knew that we will be losing this one. I was only hoping we would keep the scoreline low. We missed out on a few important defenders which quickly proved to be fatal. The passing and movement of the Gunners was extremely simple and easy. Everyone knew where the others were, and one could have closed his eyes and passed to his team mate effortlessly. For ACE Untd, the whole formation was a huge void. There were no passes in the mid and there was a complete lack of switch of play. While the gunners were coolly switching play from right to left and back with accurate long passes and lobs. Their through balls were clean and swift, and they could outplay 3-4 defenders in a single pass. That's something that can be learnt only by experience and practice.
    We MRGI students live in such a hectic world that college is what appears even when we open or close our eyes. In such a mad rush to nowhere, we miss out a few delightful things like sports, and extra-curricular stuff. This lack of exposure to sports has brought ACE Untd to a questionable situation. All team members are separated by atleast 30KM across the city and college is the only place that is accessible. A negligible 15-20 min of practice isn't practice at all. It's a difficult choice between studies and soccer. It's a difficult choice between what we love and what is important. It's a difficult choice between what's easy and what's right.
    Today ACE Untd woke up, when they should have done that a long time ago. We have realized the potential of a simple organised team. ACE Untd has but been a collection of some good players who never learnt to co-ordinate with team mates. Maybe in the near future, when we would have played a good number of matches, ACE Untd would finally become a Team.

Life's Hairpin Bend

Somehow, after abiding the last few days, I can see that life has taken a sharp U-turn and I nearly fell off the cliff. It's been a series of disappointing days with text-books stolen, soccer going bad to worse, college not being enjoyable, and the latest, my guitar's only working pickup giving away ...
   After going through a torrid day today, I thought some guitar work would do good. But turns out that the only pickup that works on it is finally spoilt and it gives a horrible distorted shriek when I play a simple acoustic patch. The patches with some distortion gain are working fine and whenever I switch to an acoustic patch, the amp starts shrieking. The volume suddenly goes up on its own to such an extent that I have to jump and slam the power off, before my neighbour bangs the door. At first, I thought this is a problem with the Zoom 505II that I use, but when I connected my acoustic pickup to it, it worked fine on both acoustic and distorted patches. So maybe it isn't a trouble in the Zoom's electronic circuit or something. The most logical culprit for me is my guitar, which broke into 2 halves long ago, and was reattached. Then the pickups were amateurishly pushed down a bit to help with my lead guitar. Then I found out that one of the pickups isn't working and by switching it on, it is creating more noise. And now, the second pickup has lost its touch and on the whole, the guitar is spoilt almost to an extent of 75%. The only possible remedy is, replacing the old, battered guitar with a new one. And that won't happen any time soon. So, I think my guitar playing has reached a temporary halt which I hate to the core. At torrid times like this, my guitars are what keep me alive, and when they don't work well, I feel like escaping to Hawai or Fiji to spend the rest of my life in peace ....

Beg, Borrow...

... and steal of course. We are no more in a polite world where someone shows enough respect for you and your belongings. A 100 Crore people cannot live without hurting the others some way or the other. Forget about the 100 Crore of filth of which I am a part, think about those 50 odd students in my class who cannot keep their mouths or hands in control. As the story goes, I get a rare text book photocopied by a friend, and carefully place my copy in the bag. What I find in the evening is, the bag has been ransacked (that word comes due to my anger now), and that book is gone. It's so late in the evening that there is nobody around to question. The first real suspect will be a student from the class. What would a guy from another class do with a Computational Fluid Dynamics book?
   And this is clearly not the first time. I've lost my calculator twice and had to keep buying them again and again without anyone to blame or suspect. I've seen friends lose gazillion things just in a matter of a few minutes or hours. If there is one person who is doing all this, he might have already crossed Bill Gates in terms of wealth. Hell knows why such people exist. To make matters worse, there are so many people with so many odd feelings about the rest of them that its not possible to trust anyone with your .... belongings. It's embarrassing to tell such a tale while studying in the 3rd Year of college. But when people are so sick around you, they are supposed to feel abashed, ashamed.
   I am supposed to be completing an assignment at this moment and I am wasting time spilling my heart out to an invisible reader. There is a ray of hope still left in me, a something that tells me that I might get my book back from a guy who would say, "Hey, you left your book here yesterday and I was looking for you .. ". But who knows its my book? It's new and unopened. There's no name on it. Or maybe, the book might come in with someone else's name on it and I am forced to look away. This is really a hard lesson for both the careful and the careless. Once someone has set his/her eyes on your stuff, it's going. No matter what kinda Z-Security you provide it. I carry an iPod Classic with me which mostly resides in the bag and this incident gives me a run for my money. There's a friend who wants his 10year old helmet to be stolen so that he can buy a new one. But he hasn't succeeded yet. Who gives a damn about an old piece of round plastic without a visor? We all want branded brand new stuff. Stealing needs some style. The marks it leaves on the the victim are supposed to be long-living.
Crap! This is heading nowhere. Justice can't come to me without a camera in the classroom. When cameras come to MRCET, it will be 2050 AD, when people can drive cars by simply thinking about the destination, and those cars don't need a road to hover ... in 2007, let's simply hope tomorrow shines for a disheartened soul ...

Drawing and it's complications...

It's obvious drawing isn't easy. It's more obvious for someone who is bad at drawing. But Drawing in general, is too broad to be branded EASY or HARD. There are so many different methods that each of them has it's own distinct features. My type of drawing is pencil drawing which should be considered the simplest, but then, you can draw with a single pencil (supposed to be for beginners like me), or to get some better details, you can use pencils of different thicknesses and different graphite, clay mixtures, all depending on your choice. Again, we can draw using only lines, or we can draw by shading. That's one more choice to make. Depending on the type of drawing, we can chose between lines and shading. Shading can be also done with lines or strokes, so they are not really different. Generally, i use either my finger or a piece of paper to shade. But one important part of drawing is first observing what you are about to draw. You might be drawing a cartoon image, or from a photograph or maybe a real-life scene, or a portrait. Drawing cartoon images are relatively easier because they are already drawn with the same kind of lines and shades. Replicating cartoons has been easy for me, but when it comes to photographs, the whole thing suddenly gets really complicated.
First, I have to find out the shadows, mid range and highlights of a photograph. Sounds simple but it always gets me confused after starting. If there is a black t-shirt and a steel chain worn over it, the t-shirt must be shadowed and the chain must be highlighted, but i often end up drawing the chain first and realizing that the t-shirt is supposed to be shadowed. The steel chain should be left as white, undrawn spaces on a dark background. I have a constant war with the human body parts. Drawing faces and expressions, hands, feet, muscles, etc, are a big pressure on the brain. The right angles and perspectives are to be realized not by drawing but by observing. With a little effort, I can manage with hands, feet, muscles, etc, but drawing faces still frustrates me. Though i know various techniques to simplify faces and get the general structure, they don't help me much. Subtle changes in the eyebrows, eyes, nose, ears, hair, mouth, moustache, beard, chin, jaws, and hundreds of other things can really affect the face that you draw and getting all those right is a big thing to do. Above all this, the orientation and tilting of a face again needs some looking into. For me, drawing a face is the biggest challenge of all and it pulls up more than half my time spent. Drawing faces from cartoons is again simpler and it gets complicated while replicating from a photograph or a real-life one.
Getting the general perspective right is a huge task. Stuff like tables, buildings and other definite shapes have certain changes once taken from a photo. They all look as if they meet at some point at infinity and 3 dimensional understanding of those shapes is something that needs some focus. I solve these problems by using a grid. But replicating them exactly is tough.

Such are a few complications that can be mentioned while drawing. Ofcourse there will be many more about which I don't know yet and only further experimentation and experience will teach me more about this so called art. For me it's more of a science than an art.

Aah i am tired typing, but i felt this term Drawing needs a special mention after I recently took up the pencil and the drawing board again, to do one with 4 people standing or sitting in different positions and looking in different directions. All of that, took quite some time for me to get onto paper. And also, i had to draw a certain fort with arches for my dad who wanted to paint that. Now the catch was, I had to do a charcoal drawing with made matters worse and a few matters simpler but it was a whole new experience to hold a unevely shaped charcoal piece to draw something on a huge sheet of canvas.....

AB's Favourties

My favourites of Alter Bridge are these songs:

From One Day Remains (2004 August),
Find the Real       4:44
One Day Remains       4:05
Open Your Eyes       4:31
Burn It Down       6:11
Metalingus       4:20
Broken Wings       5:07
In Loving Memory       5:40
Down to my Last       4:47
Watch Your Words       5:25
Shed My Skin       5:09
The End is Here        4:58
(oops I think I wrote all the songs from the album!!!)       

From Blackbird (2007 October),
Ties that Bind       3:19
Come to Life       3:52
Brand New Start       4:57
Buried Alive       4:34
Rise Today       4:21
Blackbird       8:01
One by One       4:17

AB. Yeah that's the one ...

Well, AB stands for Alter Bridge, my new favourite band who have made sure I spend a minimum of an hour on my iPod listening to them.

From right to left: Tremonti, Scott, Marshall and Myles.

    Plunging into some history of Alter Bridge, the band is American and was formed by 3 members, Tremonti, Scott and Marshall, who all left Creed because of conflicts with the lead vocalist of Creed. The vocalist for AB, Myles Kennedy joined in later and completed the band. They released One Day Remains (which almost became the name of the band) in 2004 (Aug 10th:a day before my birthday) and that happens to be my favourite album. Later they released BlackBird in 2007 October which also had a few hits. By the way, they play Alternative Metal, Alternative Rock, Hard Rock etc.
     Well my favourite persons in the band are Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy. Mark is the lead guitarist and his style of play is similar to the metal bands style. He is one the main founders of the band and according to me, the most talented. He writes and composes most of the songs and also gives back-up vocals to AB. Infact, Alter Bridge is named after a bridge near Mark's home in Detroit.
  Myles, the lead vocalist is one who has blown me away. He can sing in 4 octaves and he can cover right from bassy vocals in slow parts to the extremely high-pitched vocals in the fast parts. This also means he should be able to sing the same tune in 4 pitches each one varying only on the octaves but not on the general tune.
    The best part of this band is that they have good rhythm guitar merged with an equally hair-raising lead guitar well combined with drums and bass. The vocals and lead stand right up there. Overall, I like this band because it has a combination of Metallica type of leads and good Hard Rock rhythms. It's a type of genre of that I have to settle with because of my interest in Metal and Rock at the same time.

My soccer woes

Ahh, it's horrible when you can't do what you love to do. I love soccer and I live for soccer. Yet, I am going through a rough patch and it's a clear sign of struggle. I gave a simple gap of a month due to exams and the tour. Now, when I am back on the field, the legs suddenly turn into lead and the shoes are rocks. I can't lift my leg off the ground and a snail can get there faster than me. My shots end up with the ball rolling casually towards the keeper and the passes intercepted 95% of the time. Those 1st year guys who are new to the surroundings and themselves are simply stomping all of us down and going home with 5-0, 6-0 victories. They have co-ordination and inch-perfect precision. God knows who taught them the game. Whenever i get the ball, I start sweating and wondering what to do. I cannot analyze my options and I cannot finish the move. The co-ordination and team work is horrible. Hundreds of soccer woes and no one to answer to them.
I am just hoping my rough patch will get over soon and get down to the field with a renewed confidence. It's shameful to say I am actually in the starting 11 of a soccer team...

The Result

When the exam results were out, I never knew. It was my cousin who told me the result. And all I wanted to hear was that phrase saying, "You passed all". When I heard that, i felt like the whole world melted around me and turned into chocolate. It was soothing to hear the result after experiencing personally the whole set of exams.
    During the exams, it was the oddest feeling I got. I was shivering in the heat and sweating in the cold. I just couldn't realize what was going on with me. The cold was hard and dry and the hands were numb. I couldn't feel the pen that I was holding and I just let the hand do it's job. I never got time to re-check what I wrote. At times, I was so deeply lost in thought that I forgot that I was writing a final exam. An occasional drop of a pen or a cough in the hall brought me back to reality. One thing was for sure, at the end of every exam, I come out with a dejected face and curse myself for writing so foolishly. This happened for 4 out of the 6 exams and I really thought luck wouldn't favour me for a 2nd time. Last time, I spoilt the exams, I ended up topping the class, and this time I felt the tables would have turned.
    Instead, Srikar calls me and says I got 79.3%. I was more than delighted about this result. Now that the new semester has started, I think it's better to keep it on a straight track and let it guide me properly to the exams. I try to get too smart during regular classes and end up knowing nothing by the crucial time. Well, this is 3-2 and the general atmosphere around gives a feeling of foreboding and asks me to keep away from trouble. But trouble comes without calling. We are always stuck in the same damn ship without a compass, and with the captain dead, there's nothing that can be done.

iPod Classic 1.0.3

  Ok, first of all, I am sorry my tour update hasn't come in yet. But it will surely come.
  Well, coming to the topic in talk, the firmware update 1.0.3 for iPod Classic and 3G Nano was released and I finally did my update. I read a lot of things about it. Stuff like photos are not viewable after the update...
  As usual, Apple didn't mention what the update is going to change and they simply say, Bug Fixes. After doing the update I found these changes.
 The TV-Out options have become more open and simpler. As I don't use TV-Out I cannot really say how it can improve life with iPod Classic. But apparently, they have included wide-screen and fit-to-screen options. And last time they unlocked the TV-Out option.
 The click-wheel has changed its performance again for me. It is sticky when you start the scroll and gradually goes smooth and fast. It is still slower compared to other models.
 One great improvement for me is in the Notes. The text files are still limited to 5KB, but then the scrolling is 100 times smoother. Before the update the scroll was as if you are using a 3D software in a 32MB RAM system. Now thankfully the notes are more scrollable.
 Before the Update, while ejecting, it showed a weird funny note like, "Ejecting: You may now disconnect". Now that is gone and it shows some kind of a status bar and when the bar is full, the iPod ejects.
 The CoverFlow has improved yet again in speed. This time they did it by slightly reducing the size of the covers.

  Those were a few things I could notice. Maybe there are more. Only time will tell coz Apple doesn't tell. The battery life must be checked again. I am just hoping it improves. As of now, I have one major problem with the click-wheel. At times, it suddenly becomes totally unresponsive and no matter how you move you fingers over it, nothing happens. Only when you press some button, the iPod starts responding again.

Hi Hyd

I'm back atlast. Safely and happily. At the moment, I am feeling disoriented, seeing Home after so many days. So, I'll be posting a little later. That would involve a few details and photos. These hands are shivering with excitement and i can't type anything now. See you later...