I grew up in the third world. I saw the first tv in 1980. I laid my hands on a P.C. in 1985. I learnt about the internet in 1990. I had my first E-mail address sometime in 1994. But internet was up and running since 1969. This video shows how they predicted the internet’s future.

Block party in copenhagen

Its been 6 months since i quit Dj’ing. I quit just as Keisha released a “hit” song “Tik Tok”. I have been behind the decks for almost 14 years, seen many  venues, seen many party people, and enjoyed the game. I quit Dj’ing to concentrate on my film making career. As a Indie filmmaker, most of my films are made during the weekend. I just wouldn’t have enough juice to multi task.

Copenhagen is wonderful clubbing city. I recently came across a clubbing photographer whose photos made me miss the scene. Well……

check his pics here at http://www.r2cph.com/

The  Danish radios have been playing this tune on repeat (ok, whats new). But this good track remind me of a house-track that i used to play in the early 90′s.

here is the Danish make on it

And, this is where the tune comes from:

Today, as i walked back to the trains from the office along with my colleague Brian, i realized that i was totally blank in my head. We usually talk about wold issues and how we can solve it all, but today Brian has to recite monologues. I just realized that i have so many things to do and so little ……. money !  One of the upcoming events to be held this wednesday, is the Copenhagen Zombie Crawl. here are the pics from last years crawl. I will try to make it this year as well.. but no promises..

Now this is a delicate topic. Lot of my good friends live there, a lot of my friends think great about this place, but i HATE this place. I fooled myself into a photo competition assuming the theme was “life in Nørrebro”. Paula and i too a long walk from one end of Nørrebrogade to the other. The more deeper i got into this town, it was hard to take my camera out, as inquisitive eyes were prying on me. It was like i have gone into a forbidden zone to document their secret lives. Here are some of the outcome.

One of the prime reasons for coming to India was to attend my beloved cousins wedding. Now I wanted to attend their party in some decent clothes packed away in my ‘lost’ luggage. And so, decided to hit the closest mall, Spencer plaza. That mall is the labyrinth of small shops and some big ones. I didn’t want to buy new clothes for myself as I was hoping for my baggage to get back to me at some point of time. It wouldn’t bother me a lot, since have an insured journey (the benefits of having a better half). It would bother me about my favorite clothes, they are what make’s me. It makes me the superman. Ever seen Clark Kent fly?

I then decided that my shopping would be basic. A local telephone number, Toothpaste, toothbrush, underwear, socks (footie’s) and a ‘decent’ shirt. Why just a shirt? There are going to be nothing less than a thousand people at the wedding party. And so that my lower half (grunge solid jeans and Adidas sneakers) would drown in the human pond, and will not be visible at all. Clever, ..yeah?

Obtaining a cell number was a breeze, even though the guy at the counter flipped every single page of my passport (I.D.), to read through the visas to all the countries I have visited.

The ‘decent’ shirt was a Wrangler cowboy checkered one. Hey, this is India, where a cotton or polyester shirt with no color restrictions, but tucked in your pants tied around the waist with a dark colored belt, defines ‘decency’.

The body shop had more useless attendants than customers obstructing passage. But one of them actually made and attempt, and just for the sake of that, I did buy an “Adidas Ice Dive” deodorant as well.

The shoe shops didn’t have a clue about footies, but the Nike store did have them, in the ladies section. The salesman simply refused to sell them to me warning me that those were ‘girl’ sock’s. Well, excuse me, mister salesman, I don’t want to know how you use the ‘European closet’ (w.c.), either. Oh btw, wet tissues from the body shop works wonders after a chillie dump.

Yet another ‘prepaid’ taxi takes me to the wedding party venue. Pure madness, and chaotic traffic at 7 pm, on a Sunday afternoon? I later found out that an Indian weekend is just one day, the Sunday, when people are out ‘shopping’. I regretted taking the front seat after seeing the reckless driving of just about everyone. The 20 minutes of driving felt like a ‘bee migration’, with the speed, chaos and honking. As we enter a narrow lane, stuffed broad with two cars, 2 motorcycles and pedestrians, I catch a glimpse of 2 children on a bicycle travelling at the same speed. As I watched closer, the kid who was riding was about 14 years in age with another kid aged about 11 on the back seat. The kid who rode the bicycle had just about fair control of what he was doing. The kid who was sitting on the back seat was in his own world. A mis-calculated obstacle can without doubt end their lives fatally. And yet, as I watch them in the safe comfort in my car, my heart in my mouth, these kids were living ‘just another day’- the value of life in India.

The wedding party was loads of fun, simply because my cousins are great fun. I decided not to be a ’Wrangler’, but instead wore the t-shirt I wore in the plane, which I had washed earlier. This trip was so important to me, just to remind me how beautiful Indian family relationships are. No, we do not shake hands or dodge fake kisses. Yes, we grab and pull and talk a lot. An Indian relationship has only two well marked lanes, a love lane and a hate lane. And that is a traffic you won’t mistake the turn.

The grand ceremony ended at my cousin’s parents place at around 2 am. The boys offered to drop me at my hotel. I saw lesser traffic but fatal traffic at that time of the night. It was like people have never seen open roads before. With no crossing controls, any miscalculation would end fatally.

Day 3,

One of my days plan was to fix my Nikon of its dusty mirror. Chennai had an authorized service centre, but now i have to find out where. And for that, i needed to find internet. Recalling from my memory from when i last was in Chennai 10 years ago, I walk it down to Alsa Mall at 10am and 40+ heat. The internet was faster than 10 years ago. Google maps printed out 4 pages of route map to the service center and I decided to walk it. Public transport?, Nah, not with the senseless rolling marquee with names of destinations longer than the actual distance to it. ‘Senseless’, is the word used in India only when it relates to ‘cost of things’. And in the case of rolling marquees on the public transport on the move, is pure ‘bling’. Taxis?, Nah, I’d rather be my own stupid by walking that heat.

And so, I take long strides over the 4 pages from Google maps. But one thing the maps could not teach me was on how to cross the street avoiding the mad traffic. A pedestrian crossing seemed ‘utopia’, but with a little practice, I found the mantra to crossing Indian streets – “Risk it !”

I walk kilometers through normal Indian life, but I didn’t bother to indulge in one thing I love doing while in cities – taking pictures. What is it of India cities that I could take a picture, of that you have not already seen? The poverty, chaos, the madness, the nature, the colors, the celebrations, the festivals? Nope, nothing felt new to me. But one picture I really would like to have shot of, was the shrine on a Chevy.

Yup, you read me right. Car sales boom in a city without crossing control. This Chevrolet drove passed me,  pimped out Bollywood-style and a shrine on the dashboard complete with floral garland, incense, and disco lights. I would have loved to send that picture to the designers of that car.

P.S. my lost baggage just arrived. This journey will continue….

This is nice. I’m staying at a vegetarian hotel, with my room (with a balcony) overlooking Chennai, Egmont. It’s some 35+ degrees, or else it seems. I’m glad my room air is conditioned, only because It helps to get a good sleep while the Indians are busy honking away. I thought my taxi driver was playing x-box live, as in “live” in his car, with me on the back seat. Never seen so many buttons and levers pulled in my 15 min ride to the shabbiest luxury hotel in Chennai.

That brings me back to yesterday. Ever spent a whole day in a plane (12 hours)? I did. I flew at 6.30 to Brussels and soon after in a connecting flight to Chennai. The long, 10 hour flight. My seating was not an issue, as I shared my armrest with a well mannered – tech savvy Indian grandma (she found out how to operate the touch screen monitor before I did, damn). I was surprised to see some well mannered Indians too (200 of them) sharing my flight. No funny questions like “are yu Indian?”, “which i.t. company are you working with?”, or “why no hair?” was asked.  Hmm, nice.

I tuned into ‘the screening room’, ‘up in the air’, ‘lost in translation’ and two episodes of ‘lost’ on the 8 inch monitor which practically felt like 3D due to the distance it was, from my nose. Arrive india, and the ordeal begins. I get informed that my baggage with my clothes was not checked in the connecting flight (I had 4 pieces of luggage, 2 of equipment bag, a document bag and a living bag). This probably was a blessing in disguise, as i had equipment worth over 250,000 Indian Rupee, and the customs would have blown my ass to pieces with an import tax bazooka!

Leave the airport in pre-paid taxi. Well, if they rip me off, let me get a bill for it, at least. I get in to a X-box – Grand Theft Auto 4- live- taxi! Somewhere on the highway, my taxi driver breaks and swerves the car to avoid a dead man, possibly run over lying in the middle of 3 lanes. Every other following vehicle does the same. And, once again, i got to taste the food that I ate in the plane, this time mixed with bile juice.

We reach the “booked” hotel at past 2 in the morning. The “receptionist”, or the “watchman”, or “that arsehole” as i would like to call him, denies any booking. I feel a breath on my shoulder and i turn around to see my taxi driver still preying around like a hyena. Well, he knows that i have no other options at 2 am. So he drives me to the next hotel. The “receptionist” there wanted an I.D. and I showed him my Indian passport. He wanted to keep it as a security deposit, and I say “fuckin no way!” And then the argument begins. After an involvement by three other onlookers, I finally get the room. The shabbiest luxury hotel of Chennai.

I could not shit, shower or even brush my teeth as cameras are not the greatest tool to use for that purpose (maybe I should mention it to Canon). Even if I had my luggage, I wouldn’t have dared to “cleanse” myself out there. Plan was made to escape out off there the moment sun rises. I couldn’t sleep. I was scared. I tried to sleep with the lights turned on. I even turned the t.v. on for company. I guess I passed out around 4 am and woke at 8. Am, packed my bags again and checked out. I knew that the “mount Road” as closer and there were options of stay over there.

I took a long walk. Auto-taxis honking from behind to let me know that they were willing to give me a ride – to hell. “Fuck you!, I’m not getting ripped off today”, was written all over my face as I began to sweat after 4 kms in 27 degrees. There were cops all over the place. One of them crossed the street to say hello to me and asked if I was caring a machine gun in my equipment bag. I smiled back at him, even though I knew that he meant that seriously, especially after the Bombay terrorist attacks. I later withdrew some money from a bank and asked another police officer about any nearby hotel. He pointed left and shook my hand. I took a turn left and walked further in the heat, dehydrated, and loosing energy fast. There, I saw an 8 storied building that said HOTEL. “There, is where I’m gonna stay, no matter what”, I said to myself. I walked in to the hotel where the receptionist asked me if i wanted to see that rooms. I said “no, just get me an air conditioned room”, after all, things can’t get worse than yesterday.

Now here I am, in Chennai on business, at a hotel with no business facilities, no internet, and no phone call. But hey, I have a twin bed, a balcony, air condition and TV. I think I might stay here for a while!

Run with the wolves

Now i’m into the 3rd year of serious filmmaking. I have now set an extreme goal for this year. 5 projects in the year 2010. The first project has already been completed. A pilot music video for my favorite band The Prodigy. The prodigy and their PR firm, Cooking Vinyl in association with Dailymotion is running a competition to make a ‘badass’ music video for the track ‘Run with the wolves’. It is a fantastic opportunity for upcoming filmmakers like me to get something done. Winning this contest is maybe the 4th on the priority list for me, but to make a ‘badass music video’ which i can be proud of, has been the first priority.

The project was planned ‘zero budget’, but in the end of the day, zero budget projects are seldom zero budget. The Cast and crew worked for free, but the equipments were to be rented. I did save a lot by shooting on green screen though. Money was not the only factor that dictated the green screen. I had 3 young kids of age 14-16 acting in the music video. Two of them had to be barely clad, and it was -10 degrees outside. I had previously worked for 2 other projects this winter, and i know how easily your enthusiasm would drain out like a battery in the extreme cold, specially when there are breaks between shots. And so, i decided to shoot the scene with the kids in green screen and replace the background. I am very satisfied the final outcome, and i now know where and how i made mistakes and will try not to repeat it the next time.

There is a silence before a storm, and that silence is now. I’m talking about my PC. It is running so smoothly that even though i have been installing and uninstalling programs, it is taking it smootha and easy. Now, in a PC world, that’s scary. So, i guess its time to do some serious backup. But remember, if you delete the original after a backup, the backup becomes the original without a backup. So keep both files.

You must be wondering how i’m gonna make a backup on this blog. But wait, this is more than a backup. I am gonna share some my secrets with you as well. I am gonna backup all the utilities i use on this computer, so if it ever dies on me, i know where to find it. get it?

Utilities

F.Lux : Now, this is a wonder application for anyone who spends a lot of time in front of the computer screen. This application registers the local daylight calcuated in Kelvin and adjusts the screen brightness accordingly. Make sure you register your time zone as you start this appliation.

Feed Reader : This software to me is like my cup of morning coffee. This program loads up before anything else and is the first thing i see on screen. All i have to do is submit the RSS links to the pages i wanna keep track of (most of the professional websites have a RSS feed). This applies to Job’s database, news, friends photo uploads etc… and you don’t have to go to each site to check for update. This progam will let you know if there has been any update. Pretty smart eh?

PC Inspector Smart Recovery : The delete button is a necessary evil. And it fucks with you every now and then. The recycle bin is a good way to recover the data. But if you have deleted stuff off external devices like SD card from your camera, then this software is your Jesus.

CCleaner : This software is good for you if you are a person who keeps installing and uninstalling stuff. When you uninstall, most of the software leaves behind debris. CCleaner cleans your computer a bit more thoroughly.

MacDrive : If you own both PC  and Mac and share the same external  hard drive, this piece of application makes Mac formatted Ext drives visible on a mac. Costs about 50$.

7Zip : A fantastic software that extracts pretty much every compressed file format. for ex. RAR files ! WOW, eh !?

Image and Video

Easy Thumbnails : 10 mega-pixels on your camera ? wow, great man. Now you can stuff your drives with large chunks of crappy data. So, if you are not a serious photographer or do not often print those pictures out as huge A2 posters, that much large data is a waste. I would look through the pictures in the size they were shot, but save them in smaller sizes to save space and ease upload time. This software helps bulk resize pictures. I save most of my images to 800 x 600 size.

DVD Decrypter : Fantastic software if you want to store your DVD’s as data files into your hard drive. When you rip a DVD, a lot of unwanted stuff fills in your drives as well. Well, you dont want to save the directors commenatry or subtitles in polish, do you?. With this software, you get to choose what you need to rip, and thats just the movie you are after. So, go get them you pirate.

Image Brander : Want to bulk watermark your images. This is a simple and free software that does the magic. Make sure you set the output format to JPEG, as it is set as TIFF by default.

Quick Media Converter : Nowadays everything comes witha camera or video recording, even your toiletbrush ! But not all the times do the come in formats that are compatiable with what or where you just wanna upload and share. This software pretty much can handle and do the job for you.The interface is pretty simple and the advance mode is pretty hardcore. Now that i have shared this info, i hope to see more of your videos uploaded to facebook or Youtube.

The Music Jungle

Duplicate music files finder : Yes, we know that you steal music off the web. Sometimes, you steal the same song twice. Now, you don’t want two files of the same kind eating up your disc space while you can store more stolen music there, do you. Use this software to clean yur shit up. But remember, there might be two songs of the same kind if the greedy artist made a ‘greatiest hits’ album. but then again, how great is that shit ?… out with it !

MP3 Tag Editor : oh yes, we know that you like to organize your stolen shit. Not all the Mp3′s are ripped in the format ‘artist – song – album – song number’. This software helps you to tag your mp3′s the way you like. But i should warn you not to bulk edit the first time. Play with this shit before you get a grip of what it does and how you want your shit to be organized.

Audacity : Have there been times when you wanted to cut off an intro or outro of a song, shorten an song, record your voice over it, so that you can load it to your phone/web? This is a lightweight software that does wonders. FREE as well!

VLC player : Is a must have ! It is feather weight (means, it takes up minimal disc space and resources -computer speed) software that plays pretty much all kinds of files (well, except the snobbish ones like Real audio – who uses them anyway!) Not the sexiest interface. Download this and set it as default player for all your media. NOW !

TuneUp Companion : Perfect companion to Itunes. This software loads up everytime you load iTunes, it give you more info on the song you are playing.  If you own an iTouch or iPhone, its not cool if a song you are playing has no album cover. As uncool as a facebook profile without a mugshot. It downloads the missing covers of your songs. The ‘clean’ option also fills in the song details like genre, year, album etc etc.. NO, its NOT free. For once in your life, pay for something… GODDAMIT!

CD Burner XP : Ok, this is so 1990, but if you want to make a cd from the list of songs you wanna give to your girl, this shit is simple and FREE !

Enjoy !

Today, I decide to write an extensive blog. Lately, i have been nano – blogging on the Facebook and Twitter. I do update my status at least one time a day. And when I mean update, it doesn’t mean with statements like “am at work”, “is sleeping” or “is satisfied today”. My updates are one sentence abbreviation of a much larger story that I had experienced that day or moment. Yes, I’m observant, and every unusual thing intrigues me in a deeper sense, on how and why it had to wake my attention. I don’t get much time on my hands as to write a longer story about it. Or its just that, not that my list of priorities always are smartly arranged. But hell no, I’m not lazy.
I’m a very active Facebook’er where I shares my experience/express my views through images and status updates and links. I do this for several reasons. One of them is being I as an active social being. I also like to show off my stuff. I would like people to correct me or give me ideas so I can improvise. I like to share. I owe a lot to people who shared their ideas with me. I have used their criticism well. I can differentiate between constructive criticism and destructive criticism. I consider the criticism as creative, if I find that it makes sense at some level. I consider the criticism destructive when it make no sense or are against my rules of conduct.
I believe that one has to have boundaries and borders. Your borders are strengthened with your opinions, decisions and beliefs. Your boundary is your firewall, without which you are at the risk of being easy victim. Didn’t you learn at school that prevention is better than cure?
I also think it is clever to leave your Facebook status not updated, than updating it with stuff, your 200 odd friends are going to read and think “err… and so what?!!!”
Yes, I know that this particular blog has no structure, but it has a few things you can get clever of.
All I wanted is to blog today, and I have just done it.