Sunset snaps over the Kabini river

Lazy evenings, No cooking! calm surroundings, No cleaning! gurgling river, No laundry! Just the calls of the cicada, crickets and the critters. Blissful atmosphere... Sitting and watching the sun go down the Kabini river over snacks and coffee... Heavenly!

Skywatch Friday

The Tintin Treat!

Spontaneity is awesome.

Beautiful Sunday morning in Bangalore when we found ourselves at the movies with first row tickets to the Adventures of Tintin in the Secret of the Unicorn, in 3D. No time to even think whether a 3D movie would be good to be watched from the front row... Settling down in our seats and the movie is up!

 Tintin, the young journalist is swept into an treasure-hunting adventure when he innocuously buys a model of a ship at the flea market. He bumps into the whiskey drinking, but daring Captain Haddock, whose ancestor was the guardian of the treasure. Together, they team up against the descendent of Red Rackham- the pirate (Dr Sakharin) who is bent on hustling the treasure for himself.

Animating a already famous 2D character from a book into a animated person takes a lot of courage. I wasn't even sure whether that it would work. But Tintin in person, though animated, fit great. Just as sweet and loveable. Even the wind-swept hair was just too good. Amazing facial expressions, which are totally in tune with the character. Ditto for Haddock, Thompsons. Would have loved more if Snowy was drawn a bit more cuddlier and Castofoire had more of the parroty-nose!

The movie does not follow the book. Infact, it merges the stories of three books (Crab with the Golden Claws, Secret of the Unicorn and The Red Rackham Treasure) and also invents a bit more. Straying away from a well-written story was not even an issue. The stories were judiciously blended and with the extra seasoning, the end result was exciting.

And the 3D pep was awesome. It made the movie so grand and invigorating. The eagle chase through the streets of Baghar was excellently filmed and gave a huge yeah for the 3D!

All in all, the movie, released on 11.11.11 is a great watch if you have read the books and even more so if you have not. A treat to watch :)

The last binary date of this century! 11.11.11

So, today was the most normal day with the most interesting date. Lots of hype around today- (its just a date!) Well, for me, it was just a normal day, although a pleasant one. Nothing life-altering or super lucky has occurred, though i have a bit more than 2 hours left in this nerdy new year as mashable nicely put it. And just had to write in a post just to get the date stamped on my blog. I scheduled my blog to be published at the chosen time using Blogger's scheduling mechanism :) Sweeeeet!

Blogger vs Wordpress?

Blog it or Press it?


I am sure bloggers of the world would have gone through this critical question before embarking on their journey into the blogosphere. It is of vital importance too and spending some time pondering over it will make your blogging experience that much more pleasant and comfortable.

Customization: I think, a blog should reflect who you are; Creating a look that defines me and creating layout that i want will be my first priority. Both Wordpress and Blogger do a fundo job of helping you come up with "your" kind of atmosphere. Both Wordpress and Blogger gives you myriad themes you can choose from and you can still customize on top of that. There are also tons of free themes available for both Wordpress and Blogger available on the net. So, full marks to both Wordpress and Blogger for letting us setup a blog-shop fast and easy and settling us into a cozy, comfy zone easier. Though, i find Blogger more fun to write on as it allows much more color on the text.

Traffic and SEO: Both Wordpress and Blogger pull in traffic by themselves... Once you are registered and start to pour your thoughts out, traffic is routed to your blog by the power of the hosting sites themselves. Their excellent SEO, tag/labels, pretty much does a lot of the initial traffic for you.(Of course, your blog has to have excellent content to grow more!)
But, once your blog grows, you would want to keep up with the traffic, want to know where your fan base is from, which pages gets you more love, etc. Now, the leading traffic analyzing site is Google Analytics- which is free! And recently Google Analytics announced its new Real-time Analytics- which basically means that you can see which page your visitors who are currently on-line are on, where they are from, how much time they have spent on your blog and more. All this for free and the damper is that Wordpress does not allow the blogs hosted by it to be linked by Google Analytics. Which means, you dont get access to one of the best add-ons to your blog! It really is a killer for me. I have to rely on other tracking sites (there are alot of free ones available...) which sadly, cant come even close to Google Analytics. With blogger, it is just a cut and paste of code away from GA.

Organizing the content: An important aspect of blogging is a way to categorize and group up the content in your blog. Thereby, making it easier for people to be able to see it at a later date, look up for yourself and easier to link up the previous blogs to the newest ones (which is also a great SEO strategy, BTW) Blogger comes up with labels which seems so amateurish when compared to the categories and tags of Wordpress. Wordpress zips past Blogger on this one!

Widgets: Adding widgets is great fun and makes your blog more attractive, interesting, interactive and informative. Wordpress does not support Java script, Which means that interactive or dynamic widgets are not supported by Wordpress. While a lot of sites do support wordpress and write Wordpress-friendly non-JavaScript code, it cannot be expected all the time... Blogger steps up one notch here.

Safety: The main reason Wordpress doesnt support JavaScript is because it JavaScript could potentially be a threat to the safety of the site. I am sure this is super for a newbie blogger or a student blogger who definitely needs to be careful about the big bad world out there...

As a blogger, Content is King and no matter what the platform is, the words pouring from you makes it unique and attractive to the reader. And Blogger and Wordpress do a great job of displaying your blog out there for the viewers. If you ask me, Wordpress could just be perfect for a novice; It is easy, clean and straightforward. Blogger could just be for those who want to experiment a little and add a dash of color...

Anyways, on both platforms, under the settings tab, you can export and import blogs quite easily, thereby making things quite easy to erase a mistake :)

Cool Cochin Clicks

These clicks were made in a resort in Kerala, close to Cochin. The cottages in this resort is built on the backwaters of the Arabian sea.

 

There were only a few cottages built on the backwaters. It was very quite and peaceful during the whole stay. We had to cross a small log bridge to reach our room.

 

 

This is the cottage we stayed in... Pretty place! 

 

There were fishes in the backwaters too... But we didnt do any fishing!

 

The Arabian Sea is Vast!

 

The sunset was amazingly beautiful. We had a wonderful time playing in the beach. 

 

The Beach was clean and empty most of the time. 

 

Except for a bunch of fishermen and a few early birds like us.

 

It was so hard to leave this serene place and get home to reality. So i decided to click and click to take a piece of this place into my world. 

Photo Time Day one: Vast
Our World Tuesday
Skywatch Friday 

My garden after rain

I adore clicking away right after the rain. The whole world seems all cleansed up and pure! The garden looks so fresh and green and oh! so inviting. As I step out of my abode, a fresh new whiff... the smell of  blooming flowers inviting the pollinators, the subtle scent of the green glass and the saturated soil begging for a mushy walk over them, the essence of the innocent little baby leaves sprouting out in various hues of green... Oh! What a wonderful world :)

Sky, Reflected!

Flower Art Friday
Floral Friday fotos
Color Connection 
Skywatch Friday

Fun creating names, websites with QR Codes and Barcodes

Quick Response (QR) codes were first introduced in the automotive industry to name and identify the parts quickly. QR codes are just a 2 dimensional square encrypted barcode. It is quickly being adapted into the IT industry because of its ability to contain a lot of information. It is usually found as chunks of black modules in a white background. The above is the QR code for my son's blog: IPLgeek Scanning these QR codes using the Barcode app in the smartphone to decode the URL and go to that site directly without having to type in the address on the address bar. This was created at the qrcode.kaywa.com website.With the black and white QR codes gaining popularity, the customization will not be left far behind... Code visiting cards, logos, email addresses and website address in color with en.unitag.fr

2D Barcode

Google had a doodle just made out of 2d barcode once and the craze began to embed names, website address in 2D barcode. This was made from http://www.morovia.com/free-online-barcode-generator/

Ra.One Review

The neighborhood theaters are great! Especially when it is newly renovated, sparkling clean, have high quality audio and is just 5minutes walk from your home! So, we started our Deepavali a bit different today, just flinging by the theater to check for tickets after a good breakfast of idli and vadai. Deepavali hot new release and we got the tickets on the day of the release and for the first show. Deepavali double dhamaka...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>SPOILER ALERT<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

We entered the theater when the movie was starting... Perfect timing. Good seats.

SRK intro as a cool dude driving in a cool bike to save his girlfriend and joined my fellow theater-mates for a good round of applause. Usual desi-style mixed with funny scenes with the Khalnayak hero and the desi girl. 

Then, to the story itself. Shekar Subramaniyam, works for a game-designing company in London. Tamilian, talking accented tamil, with a bad hair-do, geek who makes Artificial Intelligence enabled Virtual Reality games for kids. Father of Prathik, a typical kid, who is addicted to kicking the fat asses of the villains in the video games and thinks his dad is a bore. Husband to tamil-badly-speaking but sweet Kareena Kapoor.

SRK, inspired by his son's love of the bad guys, creates a video game where the villain has the combined power of 10 bad guys and hence perfect for the potrayal of Ravan/ Ra.One. He also creates G.One- the Good One in his image, who by the way, is weaker than the bad guy. 

Ra.One is programmed to learn from his surroundings and situations and so, is able to get out of the video game scenario into the real world to beat Pratik who was the checking out the game. Ra.One, is able to change his appearance and is sometimes portrayed by Arjun Rampal and is quite a pain to destroy. How Pratik and G.One destroy Ra.One is the story. 

60% of the movie was pictured inside a studio because of the non-stop onslaught of special effects. But it looks good. Has SRK been sfx-ed too? He too looks years younger in this movie. The story (which is kind of an old wine in new bottle), is weaved in to cater to the kids and adults alike. The special effects running through out the movie is great. Kareena and Pratik go their parts extremely well. Just didnt like the dig at Tamils and the snide remarks here and there. Sure blockbuster it of the year.

Furrry's Tale- A hamster's story

Me, mom and my bros, just born!

I was already in my mom's tummy when we moved to new home- a neat, well-maintained green and violet home in a calm neighborhood in  Bangalore. Mommy was actually happy about our move here and she was all gaga about the spinning wheel on the top of our home which had a wonderful view! She was nice to the new guys, happy with their more than generous amount of food and clean water. She would even let the huge lady touch and stroke her fur. But dad was not yet convinced and used to be mighty naughty by biting the little guy and the tall one, though they were the ones who cleaned our home every week without fail.

Mom had made a nice, cozy nest for us and we were born on a Sunday, Oct 2nd. The large lady was the first to see us... Quite a fuss she made, calling in the huge guy, tall one and the little one at once. I was happy that they were excited to see us and everything, but, i wish they had made a little less racket!!!Pink and naked, without fur, just a curvy notch for eyes (Which was still tightly shut) but with a fully working and extra-sensitive ears and nose, it was really tough to handle the fuss and noise that they made. Pink gummy bears, they called us- though we preferred to be called Furry, Fatty and Flimsy- we were the talk of the street. I swear i could hear a million different voices and had to be constantly cuddled under our mom. 

Under the constant watchful eyes of our caretakers and our over-protective mom, me and my bros grew well. Opened our eyes after two weeks, walked around the same time and even started eating the fresh veggies and greens that our caretakers provided on time. Three weeks into our lives and we maintain a good working relationship with our caretakers too. We allow them to hold us and stroke our fur run around their arms and clothes. The little guy especially is quite a treat to play with. I can make him giggle like geese by tickling him with my claws. My brothers and me play a game called "who makes the most poo?"  on this little guy. Though he gets annoyed, we know that he cant resist us and will be back later...
Okay, got to go now, i hear them coming. They will want to fuss and cuddle and stroke me, got to put up my cute-face... Ciao~

Look how tiny i am compared to my caretakers hands...? She is quite soft with me though

Me, at 2 weeks only, still with my eyes shut and going only by instinct!

Thursday Challenge- Growing

My Pink beauty!

My favorite flower in my garden

They just grab my attention and keep it on themselves and make me selflessly enjoy them- I enjoy looking at each and every flower, the subtle variations in its colors, the innumerable folds and creases, its doesnt-matter-size, the makes-me-one-of-a-kind imperfections, the texture variations, the bug bites it has got, the bees that are still enjoying them, the sunlight passing though the flower and the shadows it causes to appear on the flower, the butterflies attracted by them and just lush green background that highlights the pretty flower!

I love the flower blooming in all its glory and in its environment. But also love to bring it in home, arrange it in my vases which brings the joy and beauty inside.