Ghost Adventures

I am slowly coming back to my usual routine life... office-home-gym. Almost missed gym thanks to Ghost Adventures on AXN but then pushed myself to go.

If I had to compare between Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures (both shows aired on AXN), I have to say that I prefer Ghost Adventures. This is one show that actually gives me an adrenaline rush watching it. Another show which is pretty scary is Haunting on Discovery (based on true reported cases though it is enacted). Ghost Hunters is a little more scientific and analytical in spite of the fact that they have got interesting footage too. GH tries to debunk hauntings and tries to explain the owners as to what could be the reason for the phenomenon, while GA is a little more dramatized. I do not know about how authentic GA is but GH is done by a recognized paranormal investigation group called TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society). What can I say? I love watching horror films but its been quite sometime now that I have actually felt scared watching a movie. I am not talking about being startled. I mean actually sweating, heart beating faster, feeling anxious type scared.

I find it very difficult to concentrate nowadays. Its not like I am listless, just that my brain's meandering a lot. Can't seem to focus on anything for more than 10 minutes. I think I need to start meditating. Never have been very successful with it but I don't see a choice. Or am I confusing it with impatience? I can manage impatience if I start painting. hmm.... now I have got myself confused. Damn!

Polaroid Photos

Today has been a good day :) Work was good. I managed to get my mouse interaction with openGL canvas working! Yay!! A lot more work needs to go into it but it was exciting. It was really nice catching up with my ophthalmologist friend today. It was equally fun to take nabdu anna's case after that. hehehehehe!!!

Went to the gym after a long hiatus. Felt really good and was pretty happy to see that I had not gained much. Half a kilo is hardly any thing :P That's a figure I can live with.

I have always found Polaroid photos very interesting though I have never used one or had my picture taken in the format ever. I had tried to get it done yesterday but thanks to my great achievement I couldn't :P. Well I managed to get the Polaroid effect done today. I have attached the result for a preview. Not bad eh?I hope no one minds the tag though (not that I give a shit). I plan to make more of these and use on my site. I just might put them up here too just to get some feedback.

The problem with going to the gym is that I just don't get any time to do anything else. By the time I get back home it is 10:30pm and then there's hardly any time to do much :( I think I'll probably use my weekends to write something a little more interesting instead of my mundane day-to-day activities. Aching to write some heavy stuff.

The second thing that kinda bothers me is that I still haven't figured out exactly how much should go on the net. It seriously inhibits one's writing when one is not sure who his readers are and whether they know him personally. I have decided not to use any names (atleast for the time being) on the blog without prior permission. They would be referred to by absolutely random names. It's how in mathematics, we wanna talk about a value and we start by saying, "Let the number be X". Something similar :) The name doesn't matter.

Crashed Photoshop!

It feels good when you crash a software like photoshop. It feels better when you can reproduce the crash. That I haven't tried yet. Here I was, trying out a Polaroid effect on some photos and it crashes. Something tells me it probably ran out of memory but then they usually manage memory pretty well. The down side to it is that all my work went down the drain :( I had not saved the file at any point. Bummer! Gotto do it all over again tomorrow.

There are times in life when you wonder, "Is this thing that I am doing currently, going to be of any use in my life ever?". At such situations, your wildest imagination can't come out with any idea to convince you otherwise. But then again, life is wilder than your wildest imagination right? You never know what it's gonna throw at you. I have realized it through various incidents in my life, that whatever happens, happens for a reason. Whatever I have done will someday, somehow bail me out. There are times when the act is not as important as the lesson which basically accumulates as experience.

And "experience" is a safe word! You can include a lot of stuff within it, at times convincingly, and at others, just as a reassurance. Thing is, the "experience" does help you, the context being irrelevant. :)

PS: Got a pretty interesting idea for the cover page, but will have to wait till the weekend to actually attempt it

Interesting stuff at work :)

I skipped gym again :( I had planned not to but this heat is killing me! Anyways that is not the point of concern right now. The new prospective project at work is really getting me excited. I am actually pretty happy about the prospect of creating a GUI with elements of interactive designing, form filling and low level user validation. It'll also consist of a basic database with some sort of encryption (not decided on it yet though). The best part is I have no idea about the underlying science of the program for which the GUI is going to be made. Which makes it that more interesting cause I get to learn about a new topic! :D Joy!

I haven't been able to think much about the site today, though I think I should include a section on general fundas of life that I have found interesting. Its always nice to hear different view points on the same. Sometimes actually helps in understanding it better. I think the About Me section is going to be the toughest of the lot. I really get confused about the thin line between promoting one's self and losing all modesty and blowing one's own horn.

*Need to read up a bit on web-mining. I have always wanted to get a certain idea implemented but never got down to doing it. Gotto atleast find out if it is possible.

PS : Was watching X-Files:I Want To Believe, and it brought back so many memories of the X-Files series. I was a die hard fan. Was totally in love with Scully and wanted to be just like Mulder :) I should dedicate an entry to X-Files one of these days!

Stumbling at the start line!

I spent most of the day checking out personal sites of various people and also fundas regarding what and how one should be. End result... zit! null! void! I have realized that I have no idea what I should put up on the site. I have been juggling a few ideas but have not been able to focus on any one of them yet. I might just end up putting them all in. But then again I wouldn't want my stray visitors to get confused and never return again. I think it'll be sometime before anything gets up. I don't even want to start talking about the design (truth is there is absolutely nothing to talk about it :P)

Even though I said that I spent most of the day on it, I actually had guests coming over the whole day and as a result I have been shuttling between my computer and entertaining my guests. Which has got me seriously tired and with a new week starting tomorrow, I would like to start it fresh. And as my weekdays are sickeningly packed, leaving me with little time to do anything creative, (I plan to change this now), I seriously hope that I'll be able to blog and at the sametime work on a roadmap to get my site up.

www.shubhayu.com

Ever since I first learnt HTML (it was around 1999) and put up my homepage on Yahoo geocities, I always wanted to have my own site. It just seemed so elite and unachievable then. Well things have changed for the better and after a decade I suddenly had an urge to do it. Call it self indulgence or just ticking off another item from my bucket-list :)

So after a little looking around and contemplating whether I should just stick to the first-name or the complete name, I finally got my own site registered.... www.shubhayu.com.

I have still not made up my mind as to what I would actually put up on it and as a result, have not really sat and designed anything yet. Nothing compares to blogging as far as new content is concerned. So a link to my blog would always be there. It actually gave me the idea to use it as a sand box for my ideas and also track my website development.

So that is what I'll do, update the blog about all my evil plans concerning my website and also try and get back into the habit of writing. I have like 5 blogs lying around on the internet, all meeting their inevitable ends. I have decided to continue this one and give it a lease of new life :P

Lets see where this takes me, rather lets see how far this goes :)

Kalimpong - An Introduction

"Kalimpong is a quiet and peaceful town nestled at a comfortable elevation of 1,250 meters, which ensures a pleasant climate round the year.The sub-division town Kalimpong was an important trading center in the earlier days, when the trade routes/silk routes between Tibet, Bhutan and Sikkim were very much active." This is how typically Kalimpong is described in most of the tourist sites. But there is a lot more than that as far as this lesser known hill station is concerned. All you need to see it, is a little heart and my point of view.

Kalimpong has and always will be my place of nirvana, a place whose memories always make me smile, a place where I run to rejuvenate myself and remind myself of simpler days, days of innocence, days of mischief and unbridled fun and freedom.

It was the year 1988 when I first stepped into Kalimpong. I still clearly remember the trip. I had absolutely no idea how the climb up the hill was going to be. I had imagined it would be a straight inclined climb up to the mountain top. I remember it was a company jeep that had come to pick us up. Over enthusiastic as I was, I stuck my face to the window so that I don't miss a single moment of the climb uphill.

We left Siliguri, crossed the army cantonment (a lovely forest stretch with occasional army settlements and the road was way better than it is now) and reached Sevoke. I was still waiting for the climb uphill when I was informed that the ascent had already begun. It was a huge let down! The road wasn't even 10 degrees inclined and I had imagined a minimum 60 degree inclination.:P

After 20 minutes of serpentine roads up the mountain, my stomach felt weird and had I been a cartoon character, my face colour would have definitely cycled through 5 shades of green. Due to the pressure difference and quick ascent, my ears had already blocked and I was literally shouting. The only way out apparently was to fall asleep and thats what I did. Missed the hanging bridge of Teesta (shall talk about it later), the awesome ascent to Kalimpong. Just to get a brief idea about the steepness, the altitude changes from 90m (Teesta Bazaar) to 1250m (Kalimpong) within a 14 km ride!

When I woke, we had already reached Kalimpong and it was almost dark. We were to temporarily stay at a house which was on the main road just above Himalayan Stores. The windows in the sitting room opened up to the Main Road while the bedroom windows over looked the Mela Ground (the central ground of Kalimpong). I don't remember much about that house, except for the fact that there were huge rats (one of which bit my Dad one night :D ) and that there was a major water shortage.

I don't remember much about the night either, I was tired, bored cause there was no TV and nothing interesting happening and it was cold. But I remember the next morning, as if it was yesterday.

"Get up!", my Dad called out, "You need to see this." Now sleeping late was a habit I had caught long long back and I was in no mood to give in so fast. Finally my Mom shook me till I was wide awake. My dad was standing next to the closed window, smiling at me. "Ever touched clouds?", he asked me and opened the window. With a gush of cool air, white clouds poured in. I ran up to the window, mesmerized, and breathed in the damp, suffocating moist air. My hands and face were damp. I could hardly see anything beyond the clouds, could roughly make out the Mela Ground below and a few dark figures running around. There wasn't a single sound outside, the cars hadn't come out on the roads yet, apart from a few ladies babbling below and the sound of children laughing at a distance.

It was the beginning of my seven years in Kalimpong, years that made me the person I am today, the reason that makes me feel out of place in the fast paced life of Bombay, where I have got so engulfed in my work and myself that I have lost touch of reality. Life and relationships have become so complicated and measured that it sometimes make me feel claustrophobic, bitter and disgusted. And then I go back to those wonder years and find peace... and hope...