ArunRocks

How much of homework is necessary to purchase a piece of latest gadgetry? For my camera it took about 2 months. The process was simple: Aim at the best (means expensive) and keep watching the market. Read every possible review/testimonial you can lay your mouse cursor on ;). As the old saying goes, “Premature optimisation is the root of all evil”

For me the result was sweet, today I became a proud owner of a 5 Mpx Canon Powershot A95. It is my creative device before graduating to a Digital SLR. My groundwork tells me that nothing can beat Canon in terms of sheer functionality and features. My so-called amateur model can keep me busy for many, many weeks exploring various permutations and combinations in the nook and corner of the device. Canon has even passed down the features like macro shooting (extreme closeup) or manual focus option from its higher end models such as EOS 300D. This trend is now visible even in mobiles.

I got the piece for Rs. 17, 500 compared to Rs. 28, 500 official prices. I stumbled across this lead after a lot unsuccessful attempts. But as luck would have it, things feel into place in time (my target was Dec 30th, 2004).

My immediate learnings could be quickly summarised as

• An LCD is difficult to see at odd angles, so a swivel LCD is tremendously useful
• Buy memory cards with their sealed and unbroken packages
• Keep more than 1 camera in mind. You might change your mind after the touch & feel experience

So good luck to everyone at Still Photography!

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Today, I saw Vaastu Shaastra in E-square multiplex just 5 rows behind the screen. From start the movie was strongly reminiscent of Bhoot and hence will draw comparisons by default. However, Bhoot scores over VS in terms of acting, characterization and cinematography.

For horror fans, the styles of horror utilized have been slightly expanded. It is a familiar formula. Perhaps, gruesome makeup has been added to the series of close-ups of hysterical characters, sudden appearance/disappearance of strangers and conservative use of ambient light. The really killer is the sound effects. Personally I felt that it has been overused. The script was heavily flawed. There is no direct connection between the movie and its title and there is no motive or a good explanation for the events. The only notable performance was that of the boy Master Ahsaas, who contributes a lot to the spookiness of the movie.

Surprisingly, the best thing about watching this in a theatre is the crowd. When I was watching The Exorcist, I was in the balcony circle and you could hear genuine gasps and squeals. But the VS crowd was a lot more mischievous. Their witty comments made the dragging scenes quite entertaining.

For me, the most amusing part was the location. The story is set 23 kms from Pune. Hey that’s where I live! Seems I have to check my Vaastu soon

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Yes it’s true. ArunRocks.com is now a truly multimedia site. You can see it in action at http://www.arunrocks.com/gallery. Its powered by Coppermine and GD 2.0. The results are much better than I expected. I cannot wait to integrate it with rest of my site.

Today was Dussehra. Pune was still in the Dhandiya mood and people could be still seen partying at many places. I saw the movie Collateral. It was a very different movie in its genre. Most of the usual clichés are avoided making it a straight to the point - thriller. Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx make an amazing pair. One flaw could be that the storyline was predictable. You would say that for a thriller, that would be a big minus. Not for this slickly shot movie (80% shot on digital camera and trust me it shows). Every character is fleshed out with elegance and the dialogues are crisp. The best part was this was a morning show, so it is priced half at E-Square. Though, when Abhishek and I had planned this, we never thought we would make it. Mainly due to the fact that our body clocks had gotten so used to UK timings. But we pulled it through.

ArunRocks.com was still having its default green theme of Wordpress for so long, that I decided its time for a makeover. Thanks to B A Khan, I have installed his DarkFire theme. I have also cleaned ugly Word tags from old posts as well. For this I used a wonderful website called Testism. Now I can heave a sigh of relief!

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Hi All,

I have imported most of my stuff from my old blogger site http://rasvi.f2g.net/blogger.html

I’m really excited. This marks the birth of www.arunrocks.com ! Hurray!

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This week end, I decided to discard my robe of immobility and decided to treat myself with some adventure. By god, truly it was… a real adventure of sorts. I’m referring to the my first TAPMI Alumini Meet in Manipal, held this Saturday and Sunday. The “adventure” part is the grueling 16 hours of travel by bus, which makes one think twice in trepidation.

Click here for the group snap

The best part was the warmth of reception. In all three years I’ve never met a more nostalgic bunch of junies (senies i.e. 2nd year to be precise, but still junies to us). Interestingly, every one had similar questions to ask me. The first question, perhaps being the most apparent, is the disappearance of my mustache. Now, the reactions range from disdain to cheerful approval depending on whether the person is from south or North. Most seemed to agree it makes me younger. Which paradoxically leads to the second question, “When are you getting married?” A question, which I remind them, is far from consideration to a person of my age. Most of them seemed to believe that I’m still in Mangalore proving that they are at least 2 months out of sync about me. We received a recent copy of our college zine ‘Amartya’ from CCG (Corporate Communication Group) who interestingly still uses and credits me for the logo I’d designed.

This time I was able to meet everyone whom I’d intended and more. I met my ex-batchmates (of course), esp the Amisha gang (except for Suraj , Bobo and Kaizad), my junies, my profs and even some super junies, who were much older than me, keen to listen to my career tips! My old faculty advisor Mohankumar or M.K. was pleasantly surprised when he saw me. Unfortunately he had broken his right wrist and would be unable to write anything for the next 6 weeks.

Karthik is still in his downloading spree and was able to copy some of the excellent Half Life 2 videos and some movies as well. He is also busy with inking his cartoon strip Doorways, which looks pretty slick at the moment. We were able to revive, without much effort, the CCG strategy game ‘QuickSand’ that I had developed last year, written in PHP. I also chatted with Prof Simon George, Prof Badri and Prof Rudran.

The formal events of the day gave way to a colorful party at night. The super junies and the super senies seemed to be everybody’s cynosure this time. Almost every old favourite number from the old bunch of Music.com was rendered again by the Alumini. I recall the junie who played the drums was very impressive and a really talented addition to the new Music.com. A rocking disco followed soon after. Not surprisingly the ‘Laws of Indian disco’ (mentioned n my earlier post) were at work again.

I left Manipal on Sunday 2pm. But I did not forget to savor the Andhra and Udupui delicacies, which had missed for a long time. Unable to book a Volvo, the ride back kept me really ill at ease. However, by any measure, it was really worth it

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