Colors of Holi 2010 on The Big Picture

37 photos capturing the essence of Holi – The Indian festival of colors.

Last Monday (March 1st), people in India and other countries with large Hindu populations celebrated Holi, the Festival of Colors. A welcoming of Spring, Holi is celebrated as the triumph of good over evil. Hindu devotees and others enthusiastically drop their inhibitions, and chase each other in temples and through the streets, playfully splashing colorful paint, powder and water on each other. People also attend bonfires to commemorate the story of Prahlada, a Hindu figure and devout follower of Lord Vishnu who prevailed over his father and the demoness Holika with the power of his devotion. Collected here are a handful of images from this year’s Festival of Colors.

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Is a Tribe in India the Real-Life Na’vi?

An isolated tribe of nature-worshipping forest-dwellers threatened by a mine — yes, the Dongria bear no small resemblance to the Na’vi of James Cameron’s film Avatar. That point was not lost on the international network of activists who have taken up the Dongria’s cause. They ran an advertisement on Feb. 8 in the Hollywood trade publication Variety urging Cameron to support them. “Avatar is fantasy… and real,” the ad says. “The Dongria Kondh tribe in India are struggling to defend their land against a mining company hell-bent on destroying their sacred mountain. Please help the Dongria.”

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Throughout my academic life, I’ve always had the fortune of getting into the some of the most characteristic of all educational institutions. As much as I wanted to call each of them “one of the worst” out there, now that I think about it, they had their own different characteristic features. While one was exceptionally good at infrastructure, ambience and similar facilities, the faculties were downright pathetic. Co-incidentally, most of them have had arrogant and retarded faculty members, who most of you will agree, know nothing of what they are doing or what’s happening around me.

Currently in my last year of degree, I’m slowly nearing the end of the semester after which we’ll either be set out in the open with a headlight torch looking for jobs in the recession-hit market (We’re the I.T fellows), or some of us will just board the train to ‘Masters‘land. Although it’s not going be easy, is it?

As it is with most degree courses, the last year/semester has to have a 200 mark project that needs to be done. We’re working on one too. But that’s not all. We’ve also been assigned two other projects which include making a presentation on 4 major problems faced by Nokia in its history and making a web-based CRM portal for Apple. Now, you see, this is too much work for most students in the class. We’ve got plenty of work on hand, and much less time to complete it. Add to that, students are known to be excellent time managers anyway.

Yet, that guy up there has more troubled waters set for me. Apparently, I’m making a bad year even worse by missing out on important practical sessions due to work related Smoking Apples and ill-health. And this is so bad a case now, that I’ve been told to not attend any further classes, because I’ve missed out on 3 sessions. Wow, that makes sense, right?

This is exactly what infuriates me. While I agree it’s a mistake on my own part, how does penalizing in the way described above do any good? How about making me go through the cliched techniques like making me wait in the library till 6PM for studying or making me re-write stuff for 5-10 times. At least all that has a return type.

/rant

The last time around I received one of these, I was really excited to open it up and check it out. I did, but I was really disappointed. No, nothing was wrong with the gadget. It’s just that I couldn’t see myself using it for quite some time.

Today, one of those packages arrived at the doorstep early morning and I could see myself jumping with joy. I am equally excited as last time, but I am quite confident that I won’t be left disappointed this time. I’ve already tried the device for short time spans before and I can now I can go ahead and thoroughly scrutinize it taking my own sweet little time.

This time, they’ve even sent in a couple of additional gifts for me :)

I won’t take long before I publish the review, I promise.

I attended the Camp Icarus yesterday, a mini Barcamp of sorts at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology in Versova, Andheri, Mumbai. The event was organized as a part of their Icarus festival, which incidentally had a super-awesome LAN-Gaming competition the earlier day.

It was a good initiative and was backed by a decent amount of attendees pre-lunch. Even though most of the attendees were students of the same college, there were quite a few outsiders too. There was a substantial drop in the number of attendees after the FREE lunch session, but the spirit did not die down.

There were some interesting session taken at the event:

1. Funding your Startup by Mihir
2. Meri Bhi Website Hogi by Saumil Parekh
3. Promoting and Monetizing your Blog by Manan Kakkar
4. Podcasting by Dinesh Soni
5. Useless Talk by Neeraj Pattath

Unlike the usual Barcamps, this was slightly different in a way that one found himself as a part of the discussion. Everyone was involved in the sessions and there were quite a few questions asked by the viewers.

I carried along my MacBook Pro, my iPhone and my Canon S5IS along to cover the event. The photos taken, as usual, have been uploaded to my Flickr Stream.

I planned to cover the event live through the iPhone, but both Qik and Airtel’s EDGE had good plans to ruin the game for us. The videos were being half assedly uploaded to their servers and anyway, their online UI isn’t that good anyway. I resorted to recording the sessions through my prosumer camera and went on to record Dinesh’s and Manan’s sessions. Thanks to the room with less attendees, the audio isn’t that great.

Here’s Dinesh’s session on Podcasting:

And here’s manan, speaking on Promoting your Blog:

(The video begins half-way through his session)

If you’ve been a subscriber of my blog for over a year now, my long absence from the blog might not be anything new for you. to others, however, I owe an apology. 

You see, usually when I’m away from the blog, it’s neither because ‘God has come calling‘ nor because the ‘Bubble Burst‘. It’s neither because I’ve grown fed up of writing long posts nor is it because I’m just too bored. Believe it or not, I’m just too occupied in other things, that writing something here finds no place in my weekly schedule (not that it exists anyway)

Wait. Occupied? In What?

Umm…. lot’s of things. They may seem less enough for you to count them on your fingers, but when you’re actually working on them, each one seems like a monumental task. These days, I hardly even find time to tweet. Yes, I’ve scored over 10,000 tweets so far and I may just be one of the most popular Indian kid member on twitter. Here’s what’s keeping me busy these days.

1. College:

Sucks. I hate the Indian Education System. We spend over 4-6 hours in college everyday learning nothing but BS. Yes, I agree that what we’re being taught are the basics and we need to know them. But why oh why do they have to limit it there? Are frames or tables in HTML really going to help us in our day-to-day activities or our career? I don’t think so. 

I usually find myself staring at the blackboard with a blank look on my face either because my personal knowledge about that subject is either far better than what’s being taught or the subject is so far off from my interest that there seems to be no connection that links us together.

I’m really hoping that I get to pursue further studies abroad.

2. WATBlog.com

For those still living in the dark ages, WAT stands for Web, Advertising and Technology and WATBlog covers the happenings of the Indian and International WAT space. So far, I’ve been staying away from the ‘Advertising’ space, focussing mainly on the Web and Technology. 

It has been a great experience so far, working with all the fabulous and experienced people there. No matter how much you think you know, there’s always a lot left to learn and getting a job usually completes what’s missing.

Here’s what I’ve authored all these days.

3. Mobile Industry Review (formerly SMSTextNews)

MobileIndustryReview covers all the latest happenings in the international mobile space. I’ve just started contributing my articles there. These are some really cool guys and their video podcast is something one mustn’t miss.

Here’s what I’ve authored all these days.

4. ExperTrio Web Services

Yes, there’s a lot happening at ExperTrio too. Although the Duo from the Trio is mostly lost in the cyber space, I’ve managed to gather a team of some awesome people in this field and they’re each doing a splendid job. We’re trying to come up with a few promotions in the coming days and will be giving out FREE hosting, domains and even T-Shirts. 

5. SmokingApples

*Music from Star Wars plays in the background*

This is the baby of 5 Macboys viz. Aayush, Aditya, Ashwin, Milind and Myself and the love for all things Apple is what binds us together. We launched on the August 15th, 2008 and it’s been great so far. I’m managing the ‘behind-the-scenes’ stuff for the site. Even if you’re not a Macboy, I’d request you to check out the site. We’ve got enough content to have you hooked to the site. Oh, we have a competition going on where all you need to do is leave a comment and you could win a FREE T-Shirt for yourself. Simple, no?

Right. Okay. I get it. But what did we miss?

Oh, lots of things. So much has been happening around me. Although I’ve been tweeting about it, there’s a lot more to say.

1. Health

I’ve haven’t been keeping well lately. Period.

2. The Mystery Package

Remember the mystery package that arrived last month? It’s the Nokia E90. I’ve been using all this while and it’s a great phone on the inside, but totally wasted on the outside. I’ve been wanting to write a detailed review of the same, but…

3. New Camera

I bought the Canon PowerShot S5 IS. Two words – Awesome Camera

The photos have been uploaded to my Flickr stream here:

http://flickr.com/photos/preshit

The days ahead are going to be really exciting. 

My Backpack goes where I go. It’s as close to me, as my shadow is. It’s become some sort of a necessary habit to tag it along with me, whenever I leave the house. My Backpack is the PacificDesign Action II Backpack XL from Pacific Design bags, and I’ve been more than happy using it.

The bag is quite sturdy and durable and has been carrying my stuff for over a year now. It has a small pocket on top to have your mp3 player, but you’d rather keep it in your own pocket. The bag acts as the perfect carrier to hold my MacBook Pro too. 

I have a really bad of forgetting things, so I usually carry along most of the things that I use the most. Here’s a list of things that you’ll always find in my backpack.

1. MacBook Pro

2. iPhone’s Dock Cable (Comes in handy to charge it)

3. Earphones

4. A towel

5. A T-Shirt

6. A screw-driver

7. A notebook

8. A dozen different pens, permanent markers and pencils.

9. An Identity Proof (I-Card)

10. A Feng Shui thing that my mother wants me to carry along.

What are the things you always carry along?

Birthday Cake

I really wish someone gifted me a cake like this :)

Well, Yes. I finally took the plunge and bought myself a stunningly beautiful and shockingly powerful, yet amazingly awesome MacBook Pro.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been trying to convince my parents to let my buy myself a MacBook (Yes! A MacBook, not a Pro). Even though the purchase was going to be totally through my hard earned money, they were simply not convinced that I needed a MacBook, repeatedly telling me to use my Compaq laptop instead. Obviously, none of them was aware of the awesomeness of the Mac. I used to try popping up the thought of the purchase every now and then, but that usually ended with “Nahi, mhanje mahi” (No, means NO!)

However, almost as if the Gods up there heard my prayers, Apple India decided to decided to come out with a pleasantly surprising offer. According to the ‘Mac @ Campus’ offer, students from select institutions were entitled to a 12% discount on the MRPs of the MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

And that was the trigger. The events that occurred after this were almost like a Domino Effect. Everything just followed one after the other. And I found out that I had successfully convinced my parents to buy me a MacBook Pro (Yes! It’s the Pro this time). I was never going to buy the white MacBooks and had set my eyes on the Black MacBook. But with a difference of just 11K, it made sense to put in that extra effort and get the Pro machine instead.

The Config:

I opted for the 1st standard model of the MacBook Pro. Since all MacBook Pro models come with a matte aluminum finish, there was no question of selecting a ‘color’ or ‘kind’, so to speak. The only thing that mattered was the configuration. This is what I got:

1. Core2Duo 2.4Ghz
2. 2 GB RAM
3. 200GB HDD
4. 15.4″ LED backlit display with 1440 x 900 pixel resolution
5. Multi-touch Trackpad
6. Illuminated Keyboard
7. iSight Camera
8. 4.5 hours Battery Backup
9. DL DVD Writer

The Damange:

MRP: 89,200 INR

Cost after applicable taxes: 97,000 INR

Bought it for: 81,000 INR

My thoughts

I’ve been long waiting for some portability with my Mac. My previous Mac, a Mac Mini kept me confined to the cluttered spaces of my workstations. MacBook Pro comes as a boon. Plus, I’ve been thinking of having my final year project based on a Mac OS X app of some sorts. So I would be needing a much powerful and portable Mac to write, design and code on. Also, with the job of an Author and Editor for one of the leading blogs in the Indian Blogosphere, I needed a portable machine which I could carry along, for the frequent visits to the office. I haven’t really begun any web-development work on the Mac, but it is a well-known fact that Macs provide the best web-dev environment.

Favorite part of the MacBook Pro?

The Multi-touch trackpad. It’s like a iPhone placed instead of a trackpad. Only with more gestures than the iPhone. It’s so wonderful, I might sell off my new Logitech Mouse.

Pics?

Sure. They’ve already been uploaded to my flickr and .Mac Me.com Web galleries.

The sleek packaging box of the MacBook Pro

After setting everything up

So here I am, grinning as wide as possible for the past couple of days. I’m getting used to the trackpad, which is exciting in itself. The machine is already doing wonders to my blogging work. Everything is just so simple now.

Today evening, I bid farewell to the best buddy I’ve had for the past nine years months. 

As you can see, the friend is clearly not happy. He’s been a great friend ever since I welcomed him into the house back in November 2007. I’ve learnt so many new things, made so many new friends, all thanks to him.

It was really hard for me to break the news to him. At first, he didn’t believe me. Then when he did, he became a little aggressive and furious at me. The photo was taken when he spurted out the ‘F’ word to me. However, I still do not understand how he got information about the actual reason for his departure. I specifically made sure he did not know the reason. We have a traitor in the house. The security has been breached. Anyway…

So, here I am, pale and weak. Here I lay, without a Mac. I’ll be forced to use my Windows Machine, which, thanks to Santo.sh, no longer bears the default ugly Windows theme. Though theming it does not  change anything, it does provide a little relief.

What happens to him now?

Well, I’m pretty confident that the boys down there will make him drink stuff that he’s never even heard of. Tonight, it heads down to Goa, as one of the (in)famous ‘Popats’ joins the Macboys.