Still Life

When one's working all the time, he dreams and dreams of a chance to bring everything around him to a halt and get some breathing space. But what can one do when everything around him is already still? What can one do when he himself is unmoving, glued to the chair in front of the computer? The mouse is simply selecting and deselecting text all the time, being controlled by the seemingly involuntary action of the hand.

A paragraph of a letter is visible on the screen and my are eyes fixed on a piece of text not really reading or registering. The hand is simply moving up and down and the mouse buttons being clicked rhythmically at regular intervals. All that's happening on the screen is text being selected and deselected. Occasionally the selected text gets displaced and an instinctive Ctrl-Z with the left (another involuntary action) restores the text back to its place. Next second, the right hand is back to it's selecting and deselecting. Meanwhile the brain, now feeling like an entirely isolated system, wanders around not seeing what the eyes are seeing, not listening to the ears, not knowing whether the nose is breathing oxygen or carbon-monoxide, not knowing what the hands are doing and not knowing whether brains are supposed to stop and think..

A sudden beep on a phone disrupts everything, though it feels like the source of the sound is miles away. A hand automatically goes across the table, reaches for the phone and flips it open. The eyes move for half a second and focus on the tiny text on the screen.. "Just a stupid service message".. The eyes go back to their usual position and the hands, to their usual process of random clicking.

After sometime, the stomach starts rumbling. The legs move, pushing me up and walk towards the dining table. The hands, as if under some artificial intelligence control, throw in some food on the plate and I walk towards the television now. Once seated, the hands move up and down carrying food from the plate and depositing them into the mouth. The mouth starts chewing automatically and occasionally remembering to swallow. Meanwhile, the eyes stay synchronized with the movements on the television. This process goes on for half an hour including a couple of trips back to the dining table and forth.

Once done with the stomach filling process, I move back to the system and start my usual clicking, dragging, selecting and deselecting. After what feels like a long time, the bell rings and the eyes dart to the corner of the screen to check the time, 6:00PM. Somewhere a message travels through the brain, "Parents are back, activate system startup". That's when the brain suddenly comes to life a long list of 'things not done' flood in. "Oops, I didn't take my bath, I didn't complete my letters, I didn't buy the things my mom asked me to, I didn't do anything!!".. and I rush to open the door..

What happens next need not revealed, it's all too obvious..

Hit the Road

For nearly a month, I spent all my time lazing at home, doing nothing. Well, nothing doesn't exactly mean nothing. I was doing some stuff like described in the post below. But 80% of the day was allowed to vaporize to nothing. Soon, the laziness got so addictive that, I was beginning to hate doing things that I always loved, like picking up my guitar! I suddenly revolted and decided to take some drastic steps and make my days more useful.

Thankfully, things came to me automatically and kept me busy this week. I got the 2-wheeler repaired and rode about 120KM in 2 days just for some stupid transcripts and ended up not getting them anyway. It just left me tired but the pleasure of the polluted wind hitting the face was a welcome/unwelcome change.

I then also got a few chances to get the car out and that was much better coz there was no polluted, dusty air this time. Today, I drove all the way to Chilkur to visit the temple, a drive of about 40KM from my home. And for the first time, I could push the car a bit a reach a speed of 90Kmph which is an achievement for me coz I never drove on empty roads such as this. The acceleration of the Zen was murdered with the A/C on, and the 4th gear couldn't handle anything more than 60, and thus I got my first chance to use the 5th gear (another milestone for me). A distance of about 80KM on a single day (2 hours' driving precisely) is another milestone achievement. The roads were completely different from what I saw 2-3 years back. Geographically displaced by a few meters, the new road is much wider and smoother, allowing faster flow. Once the divider is in place, I think the speeds will get higher, which is actually dangerous coz the RTC bus drivers think they can drive while half asleep covering 75% of the road, and the travel cab drivers think they own the road, and the right to honk 24X7. They actually might feel strange if they don't press the horn in situations like er.. having dinner, or sleeping. Who knows, a driver might end up flattening a fruit thinking it was a horn..

Overall, a better week than the last few ones, but at the compromise of rest. C'mon who rests these days? If students take rest, its called 'Wasting Time'. If employees take rest, its called a 'Rare Luxury'. If old people take rest, its called 'Wasting away Life'. So basically you get a chance to take rest (in its true meaning), when you are a baby.. Once you hit the road, there's no rest!!

(Oh I am tired, I need some rest!)

A different Dimension

College is over and suddenly life has gone dull. And just dull is an understatement. Miserably dull. Spending 12-16 hours a day sleeping and the rest a few feet away from the television screen is hardly life. A few years back, I had so many hobbies around me that I couldn't fit them all in a day. But now, most of them have died out for whatever reason, and I am being forced to take up newer, more interesting hobbies. One of them is, 3D modeling. I always had software like 3DS Max, and Maya installed on my PC, but never bothered to touch them. The hold that Photoshop had on me was too extreme. Finally I broke free from 2D to enter the third dimension of the Magical Maya. I did this quite a long time back but I was a little too over-ambitious.

I attempted to design a car (a Bugatti Veyron!!) without even knowing all the tools available. The plan failed miserably, and I attempted a Dinosaur Head (what was I thinking!!??), that looked like a cross between a croc head and a dino skull. But I knew that I just couldn't do it. I chucked the whole 3D modeling thing and went back to making crazy artwork, posters, and editing photographs..

Now that time is abundant, I took up the issue of 3D again, and the patience paid off. Instead of attempting ambitious models, I started off with simple tutorials from a site called Highend3d. I searched a found good ones for designing tools like screw drivers, gears, etc, with realistic lighting. Using a more conventional approach I finally managed to learn something useful this last one week. The whole week passed by like within a minute. Feels like it was June 1st yesterday and 5th today.

I just played around with the lighting and stuff and got these images below, and clearly there's like 99.99% left to learn in the software.. but there's one thing I definitely learnt from all this, patience is everything. Both while modeling, and also while rendering, especially with a 2.4Ghz processor that took more than 30 min to bring out these images..






So that's my whole week in 4 images...