I just realized that my last post was on Aug 1st. sheesh!! is that really me? I mean really? the gal who used to write every other day, now writes once(twice) in a month. All I can say is, I was busy with my final exams(yeah right! final exams for a month?) I mean I did have final exams the whole last week

Anyways, my craze for photography started again in the past few weeks(wish I could put the graph n all). I hope not to get crazy, but I can’t help carrying my camera everywhere I go, take pictures every minute and trying my best not to make Uday go crazy. He already started saying, please stop taking pics for every few minutes and enjoy the beauty? What he said is right, may be I should take some time off.

So crazy that I take pictures while I’m driving, of insects that enter our apartment, the plants, chair, water droplets on my glass or.. this is even worse my vacuum cleaner???? (actually I’m looking at it now and thinking which angle would be good) The other day I was trying to capture the screensaver on our new mac mini. how stupid is that? Was glad that Uday didn’t say a word, but I still don’t get why he smiled.

In a way, I should thank my friend pattu and flickr groups for regaining my interest in photography. Not for the crazy ideas mentioned above, but when I look at the splendid, breathtaking, marvelous photos that different people across the globe take and their sheer interest that continues them to take such awe-inspiring pictures, it inspires me.

With that inspiration, here are some pictures I took on our trip to monterey bay acquarium(for now I uploaded a handful as there are 177 photos) and I hope that you have a good time watching them. Also, if you can leave constructive comments I will be very grateful. click here>>>My Photos

Pictures courtesy: Archana Jarajapu

Hi Friends,

I am writing on “Word of the Worlds” after a long time. Life becomes challenging managing so many things, especially after one starts working. But, I always agree, that people can take out time for their interests and passion. I have also been taking out time for my interest i.e. writing, but for long time it has been offline then online.
A kind of trying to convert some dreams into realities, but anyways I am not going to bore you with stuff about me and come straight to the topic.
In this phase of introspection and silence from blogging, I watched many movies and read many books apart from usual work routine. I want to share about a movie, and two books (I am still reading one), which I really liked.
I watched a Hindi Movie called “Cheeni Kum” few days back. The movie is a romantic special as it shows romance between a 64 year old man and a 34 year old woman. The romance between them is simple, just like any other romantic pair of permissible age difference by the society.
They are together because they like each other. Its not infatuation, neither compromise and nor erotic. I felt while watching the movie, as if they are one of the best couple, I have seen in both reel and real life.
Tabu and Amitabh, both have acted very well, and I would recommend this movie to all those, who wants to see the simplicity of love between a couple minus the age difference.
I really liked the movie, may be I like more than many people, because I never felt age difference while making frens in life and some day I may fall in love with an older woman. Anyways, try out this movie, chances are most of you will like it.
One of the recent book, I really liked is by Anita Desai, an Author with an impeccable command over English. This Booker prize winner penned “The inheritance of Loss”. I would term it as a social fiction, which travels miles between America, England and remote parts of India, with such an ease.
The novel revolves around some 10-12 characters who are struggling to settle in a place, where they don’t belong to (immigrants). A very surprising thing was the kind of detail, Anita knows about life in a small town or village in India. The psychology of people, the behavior, and the description of the physical features of a land, all seems perfect.
A very good read for all the book lovers!
The latest book, that I am reading (it’s a 950 page fiction) is “Shantaram” by Gregory David Roberts.
The book is a fiction, some sort of Autobiography as well, mixed with lots of his personal experiences. This is a book depicting the black and white shades of Mumbai through the experiences of the Author, who was a Drug dealer and also an absconding criminal lands in Mumbai, and makes Mumbai his first home. He stays in a slum in Mumbai, and narrates his day to day experiences from selling drugs, running a health clinic, working with Mafia, acting in Bollywood to falling in love. The majority of story revolves around Colaba in Mumbai, especially Café Leopold, where he meets many people, observes lots of things and discuses on philosophies of life.
This book is an internationally acclaimed one, and very famous among all the Mumbai lovers. I also heard from one of my friend, that a movie is going to be based on this book and is going to star Johnny Depp, as the Author. I recommend this book, not because of my love towards Mumbai, but the love towards adventures in life.

It has been a few days since I posted. I was just busy with things at work and then mixing some sound tracks on my new toy, a mac mini :). I know, I know it is old as 06 (05? 06?) but I just had to get my hands on a real one :)…and let me tell you, ever since I got my hands on one, I got busier and busier. Nothing in particular, just a million

At first, it was how do you get a stable gcc to work on the Mac OS X without downloading a gigabyte of XCode binaries. That proved to be the easy one. Then it was how do I make Apache work on the Mini. Trust me, that was by far the longest time consuming thing for me on a Mini, the brainless geek that I am. All I had to do was look at the manual and figure out that it is already installed and all I have to do is just turn on the Personal Web Sharing, more like ..(umm., click on a check box?)..duh ?!

Then, I spent a couple of hours downloading the MacFuse and installing sshfs and ntfs-3g so I could mount remote file systems (through ssh) and NTFS partitioned disks in a READ/WRITE mode on my cute little mac mini. That proved to be an interesting challenge and I got it up after struggling with it for a few days.

Ok, now that all that is behind me and I have working mini that doubles as a media center (hooked to my TV) and a file storage system, the geek in moi cudnt b happ-E-yaa !

What is more, I got to play with GarageBand all day yesterday and mix some groovy tracks using the built-in library of loops and sound bytes. A liked my mixes a lot. I hope to post them on the blog soon. I hope you will give me a good feedback .

It is a monster, this Garage Band. It lets you mix pretty much any live instrument and add some nice punch using some existing beats to quickly create a soundtrack of your tastes and impose it on a video of your choice. The tuney looney that I am, I love this new toy.

I think I will start posting music tracks once in a while to see what you guys think. Let me know if you are interested in sharing them, putting them on your blog etc.

My personal favorite : Lambo Murciélago LP640
Click on the Image above to see other images.
Engine Type: 12 cylinders V 600
Compression Ratio 11:1
Maximum Power: 471kW(640 PS) AT 8000 rpm
Maximum Torque: 660 Nm AT 6000 rpm
Emission Control System: Catalytic convreters with lambda sensors
TOP SPEED: 340km/h
Permanant 4-wheel drive and electronic traction control system
$$$: ??

“Any plans for weekend?” asks my friend, wearily expecting the famous one-liner back.

We were just driving back from work and there was not much energy left in either of us to think about what to talk and if to talk.

I plan to not plan this weekend, I responded.

Did one of you guys ever feel the need to have a non-eventful weekend where you are all by yourselves ? Yea, better if it is a nice little two-day period in the middle of a nice summer month when the beer is chilled, the pool is hot and the skies are pretty blue! Now, THAT would be my vacation

Found this interesting piece of information on the Freakonomics blog:

Tomorrow’s date is 7/7/07. If you believe in lucky 7’s (the influence of which we’ve written about before), it’s a good day. During a recent trip to Las Vegas, one casino executive told me that never in the history of Vegas have the hotels been booked so far in advance as they are for tomorrow. I predict that the New York Times wedding page will be pretty full this Sunday — although, are the people who post their wedding announcements in the Times really the type to believe in luck?

What do you guys think? Do you think that numbers drive luck more than time, perseverance and preparation ? or Do you believe that miracles, after all, need to happen once in an unfrequent while to help believe ?