Cerebration

Why and How to Showcase your photographic work

2011-12-28T13:58:00.000+05:30

Have you realised that garnished food, presented in an attractive manner tastes much better or maybe you feel more like eating it, compared to much tastier food which is not well presented! Well, We like things which are presented better. We consume and adore things which look good.

The key is "Presentation".

Why not presenting your own photographic work. Photo Exhibitions don't confine to only professional photographers. Upcoming, hobby, part time photographers can also do it. Here are few points WHY you should show case your pictures and HOW to do it in much easier and economical way

Why to showcase:

1. Awareness of your capabilities:

By showcasing your photos many of your friends, relatives and guests would start associating you with photography and they will have an awareness of your strengths.

It also works as an advertising strategy. You can have a signature in all your images which builds a brand of your own. This might be one of your steps in marketing.

2. Get motivating energy to sail forward:

When people appreciate your photographs, you get inspired to work towards bigger journey. A Pat on the back is always needed

3. Promotes improvements:

When presented to the world, you can see how others perceive at your pictures.

Haven't you got some shots which you feel very good, but others don’t feel so. Also you might have average pictures as per you which many others like a lot. This generates new ideas which you can use for further creations.

4. It decorates walls:

It may be your walls or others, your photographs can decorate them. Think about it !

5. Making money:

Of course when you exhibit, there may be few people who would love to buy them or may give an opportunities to work for their creative needs.

How to Showcase - Easy way:

Its good to have Big exhibitions, Photo magazines etc, but those might not be for hobby and semi professional photographers. So here are few points how you can showcase your photographs easily and in a much economical way!

Online is good, faster and easy way to showcase your pictures. Photo-blogs, Online portfolios and Web sites, photography clubs surely will help to do so. And most of us are also doing it.

However I feel printing your photographs gives completely a different and better approach. People see your photos and feel them better when printed than on screen. Following are few ideas which you can adopt.

1. Hang them on your own walls:

* First be proud of your photographs and decorate your own walls with them. Frame your own photos and display all over your home and office. Your guests and colleagues might ask for few prints or look for your service.

* Setup a pin board to showcase your best photographs. Print them on paper and collage them on to the board. It is not expensive, yet gives a great impact. Show them to your friends and visitors

2. Gift your photographs:

You would have occasions where you have to gift something to your dear ones. Why buy from shops, you can gift your pictures. I am sure they will like it.

3. Create a portfolio:

Create a printed portfolio album in bigger size and keep it in your magazine stand. Let your guests and friends have a look at it in leisure.

You can also keep an album of your best shots in your car and let you co-passenger view at it while driving.

4. Make few free photo shoots:

Why not offering few friends a free photo shoot. What you need from them is their time. Give them beautiful pictures, frame few best shots and I am sure they will show case it further on your behalf.

5. Another way showcase is to print your pictures on T-shirts, Tea mug and what not.

Note: These are some of the ideas I personally thought. These are not the only ideas for showcasing your work.

Psychological evolution

2011-09-23T17:08:00.001+05:30

Few days back, my niece, Gowri and I had a discussion on human psychological evolution over period of time. She had to prepare some contents around that subject. That was the topic for her mini research. Physical evolution of human - we call know Darvin's theory. Survival of fittest etc. But they also believe that there is psychological evolution as well. My sister, jukka was also involved in the discussion.

Gowri's point was we are evolved psychologically to a very high level. But I had another thought. Even though we have technologically advanced we have not evolved psychologically. Let's see different areas of life:

1. Social Life: I think we have actually regressed in social life. We have stopped meeting people and without meeting people I dont think we can have emotional attachment with them. So definitely with the age of Facebook, G+ etc, we have not evolved Psychologically.

2. Family Life: We have started to live in more and more divided families rather than joint families. I think that is a regress in family life

3. Education: Gurukul system was the best and was enabling students in various skills. Now a days kids are so much dependent and not multi skilled. They go to school to pass exam and to get good marks and forget their leanings later. This is surely not an evolution.

There were so many other points we discussed. Please share your thoughts..

Regards,
Karthik

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Very funny statement

2011-08-18T13:22:00.001+05:30

This morning I read a news article which says: congress thinks that international powers are involved behind Anna's movement. They have asked to investigate more on that. They think US is involved. Congress thinks Anna being such a weak individual without even an organization could have not pulled these much people support.

This is very hilarious. Congress should at least understand Anna is not a terrorist, but a social reformer. Indian aam aadmi always supports for good cause and we don't need US or any other international powers for us to push.

Or even if they support anna its only for his intentions. Congress instead of working towards anti corruption acts, they are just making non-sense statements and getting into traps.

Dear congress targetting Anna will always come back to you as boomerang. Beware of any actions you take.

Regards,
bhrateeya aam aadmi

A chocolate story

2011-07-07T15:54:00.002+05:30

This morning, on the way to office, I was waiting in one of the trafffic signals. A six-to-seven-year boy came to my window and knocked car window pane. He was hanging some God's photo to his neck. His faciapl expression was very pittyful. He begged with his empty bowl. I felt very sad that this boy is begging at the time when he should be going to school and playing with mates. I took few moment to decide whether give some pennies or not. After few seconds he knocked my window again raising his bowl. I usually don't encourage beggars unless I am convinced that the person is really deserving.
This boy seemed to me as a deserving and instead giving money, I gave a chocolate I had. He took it with sad face and went to the car behind mine. I just observed with curiosity. For my surprise the six-year chap took chocolate from his bowl and with out eve seeing what it is, threw that under the car and went ahead begging
I don't understand what made him to throw the chocolate ! What you think ?

HDD crash

2011-07-03T12:30:00.001+05:30

I got a new Windows 7 laptop last month from office. Dell laptop with 4 GB ram and 250GB HDD and 2.8 GHz intel duo processor. Hi-fi config. Loved it.

For some reason last week, I got a weird sound while HDD was accessed. The next day it just hung. When re-booted, I got an error saying no boot device found. Alas, my HDD is gone. I lost data of almost 40 days. Some are project related and some are adya's pics. I used take back up every week with old laptop. But as this was new I had not yet started to take back up yet. Never expected such an early mess up.

Anyway, HDD has been given for data recovery, hoping I get back all lost data.

Please pray for me so that I get all Adya's pigs

Called 100

2011-07-01T00:04:00.000+05:30

Have you ever called 100 number in your life. I recently called 100, the police number.

It was a love saturday evening, we were coming from Shopper's stop bannerghatta road towards our house on JP nagar ring road. After crossword the traffic had piled up. I thought, it was normal traffic. It was around 8 PM. After 5 - 10 min we realized that we had actually stuck in very bad traffci jam. It took around 45 min to reach 6th avenue junction. Initially we though there could have been an accident or some heavy vehicle stuck in mid road. Later we realized there was no such problem. At 6th avenue junction there a major chaos. Vehicles were stuck in deadlock positions. Only reason was that there was no police constable to control the traffic.

I came out of horrible maze, which was still a chaos. This time I wanted to do something for this. I called up 100 and informed about this. The lady on the other side acknowledged the issue and immediately floated the info to police walky talky. I could here response from concerned inspector as well saying he will send someone. I was so happy.

I felt happy that I could work towards a solution, instead of just cursing police guys.

Regards,
Karthik

A Video Tutorial for Adobe Interactive form using SAP ABAP Webdynpro

2011-05-27T15:48:00.000+05:30

You can use this as a step by step guide to create Adobe interactive form from SAP ABAP Webdynpro

New life

2011-05-24T07:37:00.000+05:30

Oh man never thought it would be so different. My entire life is re-aligned. Day to day activities have changed. We are all revolving around my angel

First 5 months both mom n daugter were in my in-laws place. At that time I used to shuttle to their place, office and home. That was daily. If there was some delay in visiting her, she doesnt used come to me.

In the 5th month we named her Adya. Sowmya and I did lot of research and found that Adya is what suited most.

Now she is home. Will write more about her in next post

Regards,
Karthik

Tak tak tak

2011-05-20T19:34:00.000+05:30

Someone there??

I am Dad now :)

2010-11-30T13:14:00.003+05:30

Ohh I can't believe am Dad now. Am I so old ... ahem not really !

We were blessed with baby girl on 2nd Nov 2010. She is changing our lives now. She is center of discussion now.

I am planning to start a blog for her. That will be my gift to her when she is ready to pick up blogging ;). She will have a legacy from birth for her blog ..

Another astonishing thing happening is most of my friends have become/ are becoming parents this year. So we are all creating generation now. I am really excited about this..

Congrats to my following friends for becoming new parents:

Anil - Aruna
Sushma - Gautham
Sridhar - Shailaja
Dhruva - Sri Lakshmi
Sunil - Rekha (My BIL)
Rudresh
Kiran (2nd one)
And more ..

My first experience with Android

2010-10-08T23:12:00.001+05:30

Wow its a big world. After working with my new Android phone, i really started loving it. Thanks to my wife Sowmya for gifting it.

One first thing i observed and loved was the standardization and stabilization of apps.

I will write more abt mu favs. Currently i am using blogger client from my Android samsung galaxy 5 phone. This is my first post

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Lost and found

2010-09-16T09:39:00.001+05:30

Oh my God! I don't know how to express this. My sister is a lucky ? Or Her honest trust in God ? Or really efficient police department ? What ever it is she got back her stolen car after 9 weeks

She had given complaint when an early morning theif broke into the car and stole it. Till then there was no clue where it was. It is Tata Indica car. Suddenly day before yesterday she got call from police station saying that they found a car in some other police station and asked her to go and identify. She went and identified that that's the car. Wow! Seems to be filmish right, but it just happened in my own family. We were all so happy for her

What she did during 9 weeks: She just believed in God and did not worry too much about the lost one. She followed up with police and also enquired whether insurance amount will be obtained. She found she would get 80% of insured amount. She had to wait for 3 months and get certificate from police that they could not find it, so that insurance company would make payment. Every day she used to pray God asking him to give more courage and energy to handle situations. :)

Where had actually car gone: Thief was a Kerala based muslim who had stolen many cars from bangalore and sold to an Andhra guy with AP registration and fake RC book for 2.6 lakhs. My sister had given complaint in Chennammana kere police station. Few weeks back JC nagar police station got a complaint from a priest of a temple that his Indica is been stolen. With their informers' help police could trace that car has gone to AP. While searching priest's car they my sister car in the new owner's garage. It was cleanly maintained with emision check and all the things. As it was stolen car, police had to siege the same. They could also trace the thief and as per him this car was stolen near my sister's place. JC nagar police informed Chennammana kere police regarding the same. Then these police told about my sister's complaint and tried to match the chasis number. They tried to tamper the last digit. But it was very evident that that's the car.

She will be getting the same in next 10 days after paper work. This episode really adds more trust to our police department. Kudos police

Regards,
Karthik C Sunil

Leaf Eater..

2010-09-14T11:26:00.001+05:30

Leaf Eater..
Originally uploaded by Karthik C S

Two of Five - Multimedia..

2010-08-28T16:14:00.005+05:30

I have been thinking from quite some time regarding REAL multimedia system. We all know we have five sense of organs. Namely Eyes, Ears, Nose, Tongue and Skin. We have five ways of sensing through these organs- Sight, Sound, Odor, Taste and Touch. We are really thankful to God that we have got ability to feel these senses.

We think human being is very intelligent. Yes we are, but we have scored only 2 out of 5 with respect these senses. I think REAL multimedia is that system, which can have all five senses :) As of now, we have conquered only Sight and Sound. Till now we have devices only for audio and video capabilities. Other 3 senses yet to be conquered.

Assume of a website which describes preparing a Dish. As of now people can only see how the dish looks like. If we had devices which can also produce aroma, taste and touch senses, we could have effectively presented how to prepare the dish, and how it tastes and smells.

Assume of online catalog for buying a cloth. As of now, you can only see its picture. If we had a device that give a sense of touch. You could have sensed the material of the cloth before buying the same. Online shopping becomes much more effective.

Assume of an album of your friend in a party. As of now your friend can only share you the photos and videos. If we had devices which can sense and re-produce the odor, you can also feel how your friend smelled, what perfume she used etc :)

Let's see what do I mean by conquering senses. Life cycle of senses are Sensors, Converters, Storage, Transport and Reproduce.

Sensors: We have devices like Still and Video Cameras to capture Sight. We have magnetic tape recorder and voice sensors to capture sound. We do not have devices to sense and capture Odor, Touch and Taste.
Converters : Once sensed, we need devices which can convert feeling of senses into a form which can be stored. For example, light sensed by a digital sensor, converts it into electronic form which can be then stored on a memory card. As of now we do not have converters which can convert Odor, Touch and Taste into storable format.
Storage : We have memory sticks, Tape drives and secondary hard drives. These devices should be common for all multimedia forms, including odor, touch and taste
Transport: We have wired and wire less transport mechanisms. Again, these should not be different than what we already have for odor, touch and taste.
Reproduce: As of now we have CRTs, LCD displays and projectors for re-producing light data. We have DVD players, Cassette players, MP3 players and grama phone kind of devices which can re-produce Audio data. It is a huge challenge as of now to produce a feel of Odor, Touch and Taste.

We have a wide range of area where our scientists need to put there brains and research on sensors, converter and re-producers of Odor, Taste and Touch.

Do I make some "SENSE" ?

Build and make - Part 9 - Go Green

2010-08-19T15:12:00.005+05:30

Prequels -->>

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

It is very important from aesthetic, social, health and financial perspective to go green while you are making your new home.

Let's see what are the things that you can do to be eco friendly.

Solar water heater and solar cells: Go hot water is a must for any home. Bescom has any way made it mandatory to install solar water heater before they can grant you power connection. You can think and provide connections from solar so that you can use it easily. While installing the same, you can also go for solar cells that can charge your batteries and can be used for your lights and fans. It really reduces your monthly cost with some one time investment. It is definitely value for money. I think after started using solar I think I am easily saving about RS 300 pm.

Rain water harvesting: There are 2 ways to make it happen. One, is to let the mother earth absorb as much rain water as possible. Way to do is to have a pit where big stones, small stones and other filtering objects are put and collate all the rain from your roof and directed to the pit. This will increase the water bed. If you have a bore-well, it will definitely help you

Two, is to have a water tank/ sump to collect the roof water for re-use. You get a lot of good filters which can be installed and move the roof water to the tank for re-use.

I have gone to the second option and re-using rain water for my garden/ car washing etc. There are some high end filters which will enable the water for drinking purpose as well.

Provide space for Garden: It is important to have a small garden within your compound. It gives a lot of energy with you see green in your house. You can grow simple flowering plants, fruit plants etc. It becomes a great weekend activity and good exercise as well.

Indoor garden, Roof top gardens are also great options.

Use Natural Light and Ventilation : Use Sky lights in your roof which will reduce lot of power usage in day time. I have implemented sky light in Living, Pooja and a corner of Bath as well. Sky lights not only give commercial value, also they add great aesthetics to the interiors. Light and Shadow makes it more beautiful.

Use bigger windows and vents at the top levels for hot air exits. This will enable natural ventilation. Also use cross ventilation concepts so that air circulates in correct directions. This will reduce usage of fans and also feels very natural.

Use Clay and Stone Material: Use hallow clay blocks instead of bricks. Preparation of clay block does not use fire burning, they are dried in sun light. They require less cement and no paint on them. As they are hallow, they act as heat and sound proof. :)

Use clay tiles for flooring or may be you can use granite as well. Instead of vitrified. Preparation of Vitrified is not eco-friendly. Advantage of clay tiles are: They absorb water fallen on them and provides great grip while stepping on them. And slowly evaporates the absorbed water. Vitrified will only make it slippery.

Stone is great material for walls. Very less maintenance cost. It looks great. Great aesthetic appearance and very natural.

Use roof clay tiles, which gives nice terracotta look to the ceiling and as well as helps to reduce the concrete thickness. It also acts as heat resistant during summer.

Lessen steel usage: As much as possible avoid, beams and pillars. Go for foundation construction.

Lessen cement usage as much as possible: No need to put all round concrete along the watts. Leave it with mud. You can then use some path way using natural stones.

Try to go for different designs of compound which uses less cement and concrete, you can simply erect stones as compound. Think out of box.

Instead of cementing entire car porch, think of going for stone or lawn. It looks beautiful

Try to GO GREEN while making your new HOME

Regards,
Karthik C Sunil

Trip to Srirangapattana

2010-07-26T08:45:00.001+05:30

Mysterious Path

2010-07-11T14:47:00.001+05:30

Mysterious Path
Originally uploaded by Karthik C S

During my recent visit to Dharmasthala

Energy conservation

2010-06-17T08:39:00.001+05:30

I was thinking about energy shortage in the current situation. Also thinking fuels which are short term like petroleum etc. I understand we are using solar, tidal, wind and other non-conventional ways to generate power but not in high volume. What could be done at root levels to tackle power shortage.

We have learnt in our school days that energy can neither be created and not be destroyed, it can only be copnverted from one for to another. Having this as background, I had some wiered thinking few days back.

We have seen in recent past that people have become very health conscious and do a lot of exercise to excert energy and burn a lot of calories. This is energy expended and getting lost as heat or some kind of energy which can not be used in constructive manner. Is there a way to pouch these burnt calories into one of the useful forms?

What can be done:
1. Can we dynamos fixed under thread mills and cycles in gyms

2. Special mats which can sense step imapct and convert into electrical energy, in pathways of parks where milliions of people walk every morning

3. Many more sensors and energy converters in fitness centers !

What you guys feel !!!!
Regards,
Karthik Sunil

Our vendors - Build and Make part 8

2010-05-31T01:11:00.003+05:30

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

There were so many vendors that we searched for different purposes. Other than civil work by my brother-in-law almost all other materials we have bought from multiple. vendors. Vendor selection was through many criteria like - availability of materials we liked, quality, referral, cost and reliability.

Let me try to list down the same ans some information, which might be useful for others.

Wood: This was our first purchase. We bought most of wood from vinayaka timbers mysore road. All wood was teak and we also bought a lot of around 42 cft. Cutting log was an amazing experience. It costed me around 1550/_ per cft. Cut pieces was around 1800/- . In total we purchased almost 150 cft of teak wood.

Note: you need to have sufficient time for seasoning especially if you go for log. At least 3 to 4 months

Granite: The second important purchase we made was granite stones. We roamed almost every place in bannerghatta road for our choice of stones. We liked few stones like amba white, chickoo pearl, madhura gold. Out of which chickoo pearl was most favourite. But it was tooo expensive, around 180/- per sft. So we went for madhura gold which we got at 125/- at Natural Granites. We bought around 1000 sft

Ceramic tiles: just above natural granites they have their own ceramic showroom, with the name of south india ceramics. We bought most of tiles there. We liked kajaria brown and cream (our most loved combination) a lot. We selected that for our bath room. Selected a white tile for pooja and a grey combination for mom's room. Average cost for tiles was around 60/-. Pooja tiles were around 79/-. Flooring tiles were around 40/-. We wanted to buy wood looking ceramic tiles for kitchen which have non-skid surface. We could not get in natural granites. We searched a lot in many places and at last found in tile print near lalbhag west gate. But it was too expensive. 120/- per sft.

Attangudi tiles: These were our favourite tilies which we bought from village in tamil nadu called attangudi. These tiles are hand made clay tiles which usually come three basic colors and some patterns. Red, green and yellow. We bought red tiles which gives us feeling of red oxide. They are 26/- per sft. We bought around 500 sft. The company is called as shivan shakti tiles and contact person is called as ayyappan. We did money transaction over internet and material was dispatched through KPN. It was very prompt and neat service. But you need to have skilled labourer for laying the same. Point to note, its better to buy 10 to 15 percent more as there might be some wasteage and its difficult to re-ship few more tiles.

Wood fittings: latches, handles, locks, curtain brackets rods, gate hooks etc. We bought all these items in mahaveer hardware at kathriguppe. He was having good quality and good price. More over he has good consulting capability. Expenses for wood fittings were around 60000/-.

Plumbing fittings: All our plumbing fittings were bought from mahaveer hardware, katriguppe. They include commodes, wash basins, jaguar wall mixers, spouts and taps, mirrors and other accessories. Only bath tub we bought from tile print. Plumbing fittings alone costed me around 50000/-

Interiors: Most of the materials for interiors were purchased from maruthi glass and ply wood at chandra layout. The materials cost was around 2.0 lakhs as a whole. This includes 2 wardrobes, 1 library unit, TV unit, crockery unit, shelves and few drawers.

Electrical fittings: We bought all our electrical fittings from JP lights in BVK Iyengar road. It included wall brackets, drop lights, bulk heads, ceiling roses and all fancy lights. All costed us around 20000/-.

Clay products: clay tiles, henchu for chajjas, clay floor tiles and for mural work. For all these things, we went to clay shop near JSS circle banashankari.

Few more places: Metro hardware city market, Town hardware beside metro.
Regards,
Karthik Sunil

Interiors - Build and make - Part 7

2010-05-23T11:53:00.003+05:30

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

I am back with next part of build and make series. Its about interiors.

The idea: It's always better to think about the interiors very early in the game. May be during civil design itself. Atleast an idea of what you would like to do later. That helps a lot in making arrangements during each stage. Like keeping an opening during wall construction, providing an electrical or water point, paneling etc. I know it is not so easy to think about finishing during early stages. You would have multiple other things to worry. But still if you can spend some time to make an idea it would help later and avoid breaking walls :)

The concepts: Once you have some idea in your mind try to conceptualize. May be you try to visualize on a particular position or wall. May be you have make some provision for electrical socket, water outlet or may be you need wall hole or inner finishing for some art work. Advantage of conceptualizing early is that you can any provision during civil work itself. You have workers available for doing things. You can think about pros and cons very early. And over all above you reducing a lot of rework later for interiors and hence saving a lot of money.
Regards,
Karthik Sunil

Variances should I worry - Build and Make Part 6

2010-03-15T17:25:00.003+05:30

After a long break I am back on the series .. Take a look at previous posts of this series
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

In this post let's see the options of tracking and controlling the project of building your house.
There are several things you need to track as construction is started. For anything to be tracked we need to have some baselines. So first thing is establish the baseline with your builder as well as your Architect. Am I sounding too technical here. Yes! may be, but things to do are very practical and needs basic common sense. No big deal!

Following are the areas you need to establish the baselines

Time lines
Cost
Quality

Talk to builder and architect and come up with high level schedule. Define few stages. Like Foundation, Lintel, Roof, Flooring, Plastering, Painting, Interiors etc.. Ask them whats the best shot and worst case when these can be achieved in terms of time lines. And map it with your and your and your family's expectation. This is your schedule baseline. Most of the project dont have this. If your builder can not give this, its ok. Not mandatory, unlike cost baseline.

On cost, its a little different and more stringent. Depending on the type of contract with the builder (Discussed in Part 3 ) he should provide cost estimate per item or per square or per labour. It needs to be agreed by all the parties upfront to avoid any conflicts later. The agreed cost estimate would be the cost baseline for your tracking.

Calculating the variances:
You being the sponsor/owner of the project it your responsibility to have eagle eye on the project. You dont need to do micro management if you had given for full contract, but still it is needed that you know where it stands in terms of Time, Cost and Quality (However, it's not so easy to perform quality checks by you alone, you architect might pitch in for help).

For time, you have review your baselines where you builder had committed to finish stages in certain time. Review the same and see if he could achieve the same. If not see if there were any change in plans or he is really stuck in getting things done. You need to talk to your builder highlighting the slippage. BUT
Maintainign time lines in construction area is not as same as Software or any other area. Your builder tend to slip the timelines. If it is really ok to you, and time is not that you are looking for, DO NOT make a big mess for this. Just inform that he is slipping and get more practical date and update the baseline. Pressurising builder usually have adverse effect on your cost and quality. What you need is a good home, you can wait for a while for the same :). If work has really stopped and you observe no labourers working, you can make it a scene :)

When it comes to cost, I suggest you to be little stringent in tracking. Review the bills provided by builder/ architect yourself for any errors and correct it then and there itself. You should not wait for final settlement. Most of the times you may have to make payments in advance even before work is done. It's ok to do that. But once the next bill is raised, adjust the advance payments. DOCUMENT all the payments made and bills provide separately. It will help you to consolidate later. Also document any corrections to be made if not done immidiately.

If you are overpaid, talk to builder and explain that you have overpaid as per estimate provided by him and you can make next payment after some stage is completed. Always measure the payment with respect to work done rather than with respect to time consumed. This was you are benifited.

Bottom line:

Overshooting Cost: you are overshooting budget by 5 to 8 % its OK. Dont worry. We all overshoot :). But make sure you get what you have paid for. Anything beyond 10% is a RED flag.

Overshooting schedule: Dont not worry too much. Make sure they progress and not stuck

600 Comments to my Photoblog

2010-03-01T14:55:00.004+05:30

Thanks to all friends and co bloggers for commenting and supporting me.. I started my blog in Aug 2008.

Capturing Autumn

2010-02-28T22:11:00.001+05:30

Capturing Autumn
Originally uploaded by Karthik C S

Leaves Weaved

2010-02-22T18:47:00.001+05:30

Leaves Weaved
Originally uploaded by Karthik C S

Captured during drive back from Tirupathi.. Near Chittoor

Where things can go wrong - Build and Make Part 5

2010-02-16T15:40:00.003+05:30

Hello folks,
Welcome back for Build and Make series, an experience sharing posts for home makers.

Link to the prequels
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

You have an architect, you have planned everything with him. You have short listed a builder who has done miraculously great job before. So you think there can be nothing to go wrong. There can be many stages/ situations where things can go wrong. So be cautious and alert and monitor.

Make sure that communication is established properly.
* Avoid phone meetings
* Giving instructions over phone.
* Make sure your builder has understood the drawing provided
* Make sure builder and architect are in touch instead you being the interface between them, after all you are a layman
* Make sure that only final versions are given to the builder. There are lot of chances that multiple versions of the same drawings are released due to changes/ corrections
* Always have a copy of drawing with you. I am sure your laborers or contractor himself might lose or carry old versions of the drawings
Make sure that thorough quality check is made by the supervisor/ builder/ architect at time to time.
* This should be enforced by you and also make sure that they are doing at right time.
* Should be done at all various stages like - After marking has been done for earth excavation, Plinth, one course brick work, Lintel, during roof, during plastering, during flooring, After marking of the electrical points and conduit, water points and conduit,
* Ask questions thinking they have not done quality checks. Be pessimistic, to find as many defects as possible at the early stages. It saves you time and money
* During roof, if concrete is prepared with a mixer machine, make sure that you know the ratio and you count number of bowls sand/ cement/ jelly mixture. It is always better. It's not that you are not trusting builder, it is just to make sure that no human error happens. If it is RMC (Ready Mix Concrete) Make sure that you get have computer reports for mixture which was loaded in the vehicle.
* Be aware that you can perform lab tests for concrete which tells you the accurate strength.
Think many steps ahead as in the chess game
* Always think ahead, think big picture during execution
* Think if certain work happening is going to spoil something later, is going to have a problem to something else.
Set the expectations with Architect/ Builder with respect to your schedule. When you need your home ready.
* Don't surprise them by saying you need it in 6 months. More the time they have neater the work they do.
* By hurrying things, your schedule may be met, but not the cost and quality. So be informed and keep all stake holders informed
Review your electrical and plumbing drawing with electrician / plumber at site
* Civil work is usually done without much problems by the builder. There is not many inputs that you might have to give to the masons. But its electrical/ plumbing you need to review all switch points, taps, think about 2 ways needed, out lets you need, traps you need. You might have discussed the same with Architect offline. But when u are in the site, you might get more ideas and you will have accuracy.
Always think that your masons, carpenters, electricians, plumbers are not co-coordinating their work
* There are hundreds of scenarios where there should be absolute coordination between these folks and please don't assume they will always coordinate. They always think about their job. They don't have big picture. Your supervisor/ builder should have it. But make sure that they are coordinating in time. Otherwise raise flag.
* There is usually trade-offs between schedule and coordination. :)
Make sure one's work is not spoiling others'
* Usually there will be delicate items, make sure they are properly protected or covered. May be the flooring, fittings etc. Masonry work may spoil them. You can protect granite / marble with POP, and cover plumbing/ electrical/ wood fittings with covers/ tarpaulins etc. May be you can instruct carpenter to put a ply wood sheet where ever he is working. May be you can instruct painter to put a soft bush to the stool he is using.

Recent updates in my life - Grihapravesha

2010-02-09T15:33:00.004+05:30

Wow.. Its done.. I had been constructing my house from past one year and I just completed house warming last Wednesday. What an experience. What a relaxation now.

We started planning in Nov 2008 ; did Bhoomi pooja on 5th Feb 2009; House warming was on 3rd Feb 2010. I can say we have taken almost a year to complete the project. It was a looong way during construction of our sweet home, dream home. We have really spent a lot of time energy thought process to make it happen.

Now its all done but the interiors. I would take this opertunity to thank each one of them who have helped in making our sweet home.

I have learnt a lot during constructing it. I dont want to use the words "Build" or "Construct", rather I would prefer "Make". Homes are Made, rather built I think!! I have started a series to share those learning. Hope it helps some one.

Series of Build and Make

I would share you the Photo Album of my friends who helped in capturing the House Warming function. Please have a look..

MS Anil's Album

Gauthama's Album

Services Architects offer - Build and Make Part 4

2010-02-08T14:00:00.005+05:30

This is the fourth post of the series.. You can access the previous ones by clicking links below

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

There are many services that an architect can offer to you. I think few are on-demand and few you can customize as per your requirement. Let me list down services my architect rendered.

Preparing Concepts - It's nothing but your house plan. What comes where, which materials to use, and all other details
Providing SOQ (Schedule of Quantities ) - Providing list of things to be done with quantities. For example - 900 cft of brick wall masonary, 1200 Sft of plastering with 1:4 mixture sponge finish, 1000 Sft of flooring with granite etc
Checking the quality of the work being done - This is done at many stages. Before earth excavation checking the markings, at plinth level, at sill level, lintel level, before roofing, plastering, flooring, finishing.
Providing working drawing for:
* Masonary work
* Structural work - Beams, Roofs, Pillars, Stairs
* Wood work - Doors, Windows, Frames etc
* Electrical work - Piping, Light and heat points etc
* Plumbing work
* Fabricating work
* Elevation
Checking the bill provided by Builder - At all stages
Providing consultation/ suggestions on various approaches
Providing valuable consultation on ventilation and light - Options for hot air exit, sky lights etc

Hope this helps you while discussing/ negotiating agreement with your Architect

Regards

Types of Contracts and Agreements - Build and Make Part 3

2010-01-08T14:52:00.003+05:30

Links to my previous posts
Part 1
Part 2

It is very important to know different types of agreements and contracts while building house. You need to have agreements with Architect and builder. And with any other parties if you directly deal. It is preferred to have all the agreements in writing. Few small agreements can also be oral. But with architect and builder I suggest to have a written agreement. Following are the high level items to be taken care in the agreement.

Scope of work - What is covered and what is not covered in the work
Time - Schedule deliveries
Total cost or item rates or estimations etc
Payment modes, payment frequency
Criteria of completion - When do you consider the work is completed

With builder there are several types agreements

Full contract (Turn Key contract) - You tell builder to build your house as per your basic requirement. In this case you have very less options or choice. Builder has all the risk of managing cost, scope, schedule and any type of coordination. But at the same time, builder has highest profit margin. Owner has very less control in this case and as well as very low risk. Usually this kind of agreement is suitable, if owner is not in the town of construction or if owner is not too specific about the way how this are built. Another situation where builder has built similar houses (may be flats or something like that) in prior. In this case builder takes care of all the major areas of construction - Civil, Carpenrty, Flooring, Electrical, Plumbing, Painting, Fabrication etc
Labour contract - In this case, builder provides only Labour. It might include all areas of construction as mentioned above but only difference is that, owner has to provide all the raw materials like - Sand, Brick, Cement, Pipes, Wires, Fixtures, Wood and other fittings. In this case owner has medium risk and builder also has medium risk. But the problem would be of coordination. If owner is new in this construction industry, it might be a big challenge in buying raw materials. Negotiating quality/ cost / supply with suppliers will be again a challenge, if owner is newby in this industry. There might be a lot of chances of getting cheated by suppliers, middlemen sometimes also by contractors.
Blend of above two : In this case, you give full contrat to the builder but not turn key. Owner keep few areas for choice during the final stages. Major areas of Civil, Carpentry etc would be done completely by builder and he gives options for owners for selecting colors, quality and others for fittings, paint colors, vinear/lamination selections during final stages. Any differencial cost will be adjusted later. Here owner gets benifit of "his-choice" during finishing stages with some "Cost" invovled.
Item rate billing: In this case, arhcitect plays a major role. Owner and architect have multiple sittings/ meetings during planning stage and arhictect provides a exhaustive list of specifications of each areas. This is called as SOQ - Statement Of Quantities. He gives a complete list of items and quantities to be used for building. Builder quotes his price and provides estimation for the entire house for the provided specification. Owner can get the quotation from multiple builders and select the best preffered one based on cost, prior experience or any other factors.
Once the project execution is started, its Architect responsibility to check the quality as per specification and approve the bill provided by Builder. Once approved, the payment would be done to the builder by owner at multiple stages.
In this case cost would be more. In terms of Architect fees etc. But highest quality levels are achieved, with lowest risk to the owners as well as builder. Builder also can have his profit transparent so that it is a WIN-WIN situation to all.

Mine was Item rate billing. I figured out a new risk of clashes between architect and builder :). I had to smooth them several times. But over all I am very happy with this model, as well as with my arhictect and with my builder.

Its all about planning - "Build and Make" Part 2

2010-01-06T15:18:00.003+05:30

Welcome back folks. This article is continuation of my series of posts regarding experiences of building house in Bangalore

Link to Part 1

It is very important that you spend very good amount of time for planning your house. Better to get it planned by an experienced Architect. Finding a good architect is again a challenge. Better is through reference, as if happened to me. One of my good friends and colleague Harinath suggested his Architect - Sathya Prakash Varanasi. My wife and I just called him and got an appointment and met him one fine day. We had still not decided when to start building. It was Oct 2008. Sathya gave a big list of houses he had built and asked us to go and visit them. This was before even discussing what kind of house we need. It is very important to apply your mind and imagine your self in the new home starting from day one to D-day. Better you can imagine, greater will be the output. Its all about thinking and a lots and lots of common sense.

Any architect will ask you few basic questions without which he will not be able to design a house for you.

What is your budget - Usually you dont know what he is talking about. Its tooo early to decide. Isnt it ? But you should definitely know what is the maximum money you can spend on it
What do you need in your house : This is mostly like - A living, A drawing, A Dining, A Kitchen, A Foyer, A court yard, A pooja, A Car porch, A Garden, A swimming pool, A Library, A Study room, A sit out, A jagali, A stilt, A Balcony, A rental unit and a number of Bed rooms and bath rooms. You need to really think what you definitely need and what your really don't need. Usually an Architect will study your lifestyle, your needs, your site characteristics and designs accordingly. But its YOU who should make him design what YOU need. As per me- An Architect is a facilitator for planning, executing the project of making your home. If an architect forces you to accept his design, he is a very poor at his profession. Good designer gets into an interrogation mode and asks you a lot of questions before even starts to write any lines on paper. Few questions really put you into too much of deep thinking that you have to really think for days and discuss with all family members to answer him.
Observe: Have you really observed what is compound design of your neighbor ever? Have you really seen deeper what kind of flooring that your friend has done? What could be the dimension of your cousin's bed room ? I am sure, if you have never built a home, you would have not observed them. You have to observe a lot before planning your home. Building a home transforms you, for sure.
When do you need your house: This is another important factor. Time. If you have a deadline you need to discuss during planning stage itself. But I would suggest to have no constraint over time. Mine took almost a year starting from execution. More than a year starting from planning
Any other constraints and Discussion: THINK about any other constraints, like - Cost, Schedule, Number of rooms, Rental unit, Income from your home, Home loan, EMI pay backs, Parking lot, Garden.
THINK about site conditions: Less light, less Air, Water, Slope on wrong side, Un-even dimensions, Uneven surfaces, Corner, Dead end sites. All these factors your should keep in mind while designing
THINK about what materials to use. Whether you need to use bricks, cement blocks, hallow clay blocks, wire cut bricks, stones, mesh walls. What kind of doors and windows you go with - Wood, if so which wood. Fiber, Steel and many new materials that are coming up in market. Discuss about flooring options - Granite, Wood, Marble, Clay tiles, Ceramic tiles, Vetrified tiles etc. You need to discuss pros and cons of all.
THINK of 6 factors always -> Cost, Aesthetics, Safety, Durability, Maintainability, Usability
As a ball park estimate keep at least 3 to 4 months just for planning. And have as much discussions as possible with your family members and your architect. Be a THINKer, OBSERVer, MANAGer

During planning stage, there are few other things that comes into picture.

Agreement with Architect and fees: There are many ways that architect charges you the fees. Better to fix the amount based on ball park estimate and agree to it on paper. I suggest that it should not be based on the total amount of expenditure. If that is the case, there might me chances that architect tries to enlarge your cost so that he can make more money. My architect did a ball park estimate and fixed 5.5% of that amount as his fees. There were 6 parameters he considered to arrive at the figure. It is pretty accurate, I am realizing now :)
Selection of Contractor: This is another important stage. Most of the times architect would suggest the contractors that they have been working before. Its good to choose one. So that they both are in synch. But the risk is, both can make a team and deeply fry you by increasing the cost. If you have another contractor the risk would be that Architect and Contractor might not go well.

If you know Edward Deming's Quality model, apply it.. PDCA - Plan Do Check and Act. Planning is everything about building new home. Because it reduces a lot of re-work.

Build and Make - Experience sharing

2010-01-05T15:57:00.008+05:30

There is a saying in Kannada - "

Mane katti nodu, maduve maadi nodu

",
which means, Experience building home and Perform a marriage function. Both are not-so-easy tasks in India.

I started the project of making our sweet home a few years back. Spent more than a year in search of good plot and finally got a plot in Padmanabhanagar. But I can say at that moment we had nothing in our mind regarding our home. We just bought a plot.

After around two years when our finance got little stabilized, many close relatives forced us to build a house. It took around 4 to 6 months to decide whether to build at that moment not. It's in Oct 2008, that we decided to build and make our new home.

Now that our sweet little home is almost ready, I wish to log all my experiences during making of the same. It might be useful for some of you who want to build and make your new home :)

It will be a series of posts that concentr

Oh My Blog..

2009-12-14T10:31:00.003+05:30

I started my blog "cerebration" sometime in mid 2005. I was in the US and stayed in the remote village of Endicott. It was my first visit and was alone. To kill my loneliness I used to socialise with Kannada Friend in the US and used to converse, discuss about many things. Movies, Literature, Kannada Online radio, Kannada discussion forum. Wow! I had so much time.

During my initial days, blog posts were mostly on Kannada poems. Yes I used to write many poems. Wow! It was so nice. I also used to put lot of effort to make that poem as per chandas (Rhythm) . Another favorite topic for me to write was about my trips in the US. I used to write in for my mom, sisters. Used to paste the same on the blog

My blog started many visitors for poems as well as travel posts. I used to feel so happy to see the comments. I started tracking the visitors from Aug11th using stat counter. I get weekly updates and used to compare them with previous week an so on.

Just an analysis of yearly posts:
2009 - 35
2008 - 46
2007 - 16
2006 - 27
2005 - 115
2004 - 94

Total - 333

Recently cerebration has moved towards photography. In 2009, out of 35 posts 20 are on photography and 6 are on my trips.

I am not sure why I am writing all these things. May be I will be more regular on cerebration soon ? May be I click more and post here? May be I post more Photoshop Workflows, May be may be may be..

Keep you posted..

Portrait Workshop ..

2009-11-18T01:06:00.002+05:30

Naughty Looks
Originally uploaded by Karthik C S

Last weekend attended a portrait workshop conducted by renowned photographer Dr. Prem Muttu. I loved it.. Enjoyed a lot .. Learnt a lot.

Here are few pics...

Trying out Embedding Wave in blogger

2009-11-16T11:45:00.001+05:30

My Life, My way

2009-10-30T22:50:00.001+05:30

My Life, My way
Originally uploaded by Karthik C S

From the last week shoot.. Model Gowri Sri.. Post Processing by GIMPShop

Deepavali ....

2009-10-22T21:27:00.002+05:30

Bekal Fort

2009-10-13T15:00:00.002+05:30

Continuation from my previous post

Bekal fort is one of the biggest forts of Kerala. It was constructed in 17th century on the beach of Arabian sea. it is currently under the maintenance of Archeological Survey of India (ASI). The nearest town to stay is either Kanhangad or Nileshwar, which are 10 KM from 20 KM south of Bekal respectively. Kerala Govt has also started Bekal resort development corp which was still not ready when we went.

Just beside fort, there is Bekal park and Bekal beach. There are entrance fees, but all are very nominal. Very nice bathroom facilities are available for after beach bath at Bekal Part.

Enjoy few pics

From Bekal Valiaparamba

Splashy Waves

2009-10-10T22:33:00.001+05:30

Splashy Waves
Originally uploaded by Karthik C S

We had been to Bekal and Valiaparamba backwaters and beach. It was a drive of 950 KM drive to and fro. It was good trip

Sowmya enjoying in the beach of Bekal while a wave splashes her

Trip to Bekal and Valiaparamba - A summary

2009-10-05T11:27:00.001+05:30

Initial plan was to go around Sirsi, Yana, Gokarna, Murudeshwara, Jog and back. But due to circumstances we had to change the trip destination. We chose to drive to Bekal and near by places. Initially I thought I should go to Mangalore and drive 50 KM southwards to reach Bekal. But, after discussing with few people, I came to know that the road to Mangalore is very bad and hence decided to take following route

Bangalore - Srirangapattana - Ilawala - Hunsur - Madikeri - Sullya - Jalsur - Cherkala - Bekal/ Kanhangad. Total distance was around 380 KM.
View Larger Map The road from Bangalore to Hunsur is a heavenly. You can just rip at 120 without a problem. After Hunsur there is no road divider, but still road is excellent till Kushalnagar. From there to Madikeri, the road is very bad. Again from Madikeri till Bekal the road is very nice. Bekal fort is biggest in Kerala under the maintenance of ASI. Its adjacent to the beach and lovely scenic place. Photo and video cameras are allowed. But tripod was not allowed. :) They charge very nominal entrance fees, I think its Rs. 5 per person and Rs 10 for cameras. Be prepared for a lot of perspiration. There only one small juice shop inside the fort. You get easily tired of walking. There is an entrance to the beach at the other side of the fort. You can enjoy the splashy waves there. You get some wind there. Other than this there is nothing much to see. Few shots for famous movies like Bombay, Galipata and others have been shot in this fort. Just about a KM from fort, there is a beach park and Bekal beach. Again there is a nominal entrance fees and parking charge and fees for cameras. Very nice and clean beach. You can enjoy the sun set there. Good thing is there is a very well maintained bathroom/ Change room. After the beach you can take a clean water bath there before you drive off.

Accommodation: There a resort just beside the fort called Bekal Resorts. But it was not yet ready to be occupied when we went. Another place was Bekal Beach Camp just beside Bekal beach Park. But its little expensive. They provide tents on the beaches. Should be exciting :). We stayed in Hotel Bekal International in Kanhangad, which is around 10 KM from Bekal. This is an economy hotel, which was clean. But restaurant was terrifically bad. Being vegetarian we searched and found a nice eat out called Vimala Upahar in Kanhangad town. Another excellent place to stay is Nalanda Resort in Nileshwar town, just beside the backwaters. Not that expensive too. If I go again, I will stay there.

While coming back, locals suggested another short cut route to Madikeri. Route was Kanhangad – Panattur – Bhagamandala – Madikeri. Though it was short, the road after Panatthur till Bhagamandala was a nightmare. I suggest to take Jalsur – Sullya – Madikeri, even though it is longer.

Places nearby: Hosdurg Nityanandashram with caves, Hosdurg Beach, Valiaparambha Backwaters and Beack

Will write more with pics later

Please Help - Participate in this survey

2009-09-04T17:41:00.006+05:30

Please take part in this survey. It means a lot to me. This gives a great input for me to improve my Photography skills. It takes less than 2 min for you. This is first of a series of surveys to statistically analyze my work.

Thanks in advance

Get This - Survey Results - GlowDay.com

Please choose best of these

2009-09-03T15:36:00.000+05:30

Get This - Survey Results - GlowDay.com

Happy Kid

2009-08-20T11:28:00.001+05:30

Happy Kid
Originally uploaded by Karthik C S

Happined defined..

Lead Kindly Light

2009-08-19T15:43:00.001+05:30

Lead Kindly Light
Originally uploaded by Karthik C S

Light is sign for knowledge... Lets get led by light..

Happy World Photographers Day

Amma - Celebrated her 70th Birthday

2009-08-14T16:32:00.001+05:30

Salute to my mom for all that she has given to me. I dedicate this photo to her and have printed it and presented the same to her on her Birthday.

Thanks amma...

Happy Janmashtami

2009-08-13T14:54:00.003+05:30

Happy Janmashtami
Originally uploaded by Karthik C S

Let Lord Krishna give all of us a great health and good protection from Swine Flu :)

My Stock Photo Galleries

2009-07-29T23:37:00.003+05:30

Karthik's Light Box

Karthik Sunil a.k.a karthikcs would like to show you these images from Stockxpert.

Description:

Karthik's Light Box

My latest images for sale at
Shutterstock:

My most popular images for sale at
Shutterstock:

Day out to Ananda Dhama

2009-07-15T17:19:00.001+05:30

Introduction

Ananda Dhama is just beside Sangama, near Kanakapura. Thimmi and I planned to visit this place on the weekend of 31st May 2009, to celebrate both of ours birthday. We started driving at around 8 AM and had breakfast at holiday village near Vajarahalli and moved towards Kanakapura.

There is a free Gurukul being run by Ananda Dhama and to support this they have a resort where they conduct professional team building programs and the revenue earned will be used for the maintenance of Gurukul.

Things to do at Ananda Dhama

Many team games like balancing games, gutter jump, Tarzan jump, shooting, rafting, boating, jungle trek and many more.

Expense

Including lunch, per person it costs around Rs. 750/- and need to be booked in advance.

On the way to Sangama, we see silk worm feeding wheels.. They looked very good	It was very early in the morning that we started and the road looked just beautiful
Balancing on the wooden log. It would been much nicer if we play with a team..	Tarzaan jump
Shooting … Actually her targets were better than mine	Rafting on bamboo boat
There were thousands of butterflys there	Swimming on River Kaveri

You can view the entire album on picasa

Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less – Book Review

2009-07-07T21:31:00.001+05:30

This is the first book of author Jeffry Archer. This is great thriller where a famous American business giant deceives four of the UK based gentlemen. These four of men form a team and get all the money they lost from him. But the trill lies in that the giant not even knows that he is being deceived.

Lovely ready with simple language.

The three mistakes of my Life – A Book Review

2009-07-01T10:19:00.001+05:30

This is my first read of Author Chetan Bhagath. The three mistakes.. is a sequel of his famous novel One Night @ the call center.

The books starts by death notice email to the Author. He will be shocked to see this email and decides to do something about it only by the name which is quoted in the email signature. He tries to get support from his lecturer and locates this guy and flys to India from Singapore and listens to his life story. The entire story of the books is the life story of this guy, who Author meets in a hospital.

Story is about three friends one guy who is interested in Mathematics and Business only. Other guy is fond of just cricket and the last guy is son of priest at a temple. Author has beautifully depicted social problems in India. Also shows how Cricket is also a religion in India. The guy on hospital bed is the central character in the book. As such the storyline itself is very simple. And also I really did not feel author has successfully linked these 3 topics. Also the title says “3 mistakes”, Author tells these 3 mistakes, but really never felt the importance of those three mistakes.

A ok-ok read according to me.

Angels & Demons – A book review

2009-07-01T10:02:00.001+05:30

Angels & Demons is a prequel of The Da Vinci Code. Author Dan Brown has narrated beautifully how Church and Science are related and how they both clash each other. Reader will know a lot about Vatican while reading it. Book starts slowly with a murder of eminent scientist who had invented something which does not exist in the whole world at CERN and which also is very dangerous for entire world. Though his intension was not to produce a dangerous instable product, he comes up with it while trying to find the truth behind the beginning of life. The director of CERN, is the man who finds the murder first and involves an American expert to crack the puzzle. Later he also becomes a suspect.

American Symbolist and Scientist’s pretty daughter come along to find the mystery behind this murder. The infamous Illuminati would be the prime suspect behind the murder.

Books contains a lot of Action, Thrill, Mystery. It goes in a very steady pace and has a touch of romance as well. There are couple of un-realistic scenarios which are ok for a fiction.

After reading, I watched the movie. They have tried their best to cover the story in 2 hrs. They have tailored a lot by removing Director character and also twisting the story as needed. The intent is met and good watch.

Books Read

2009-06-30T10:07:00.001+05:30

I am very happy that I have read few books recently. As you might know (or may be not), I was a very bad reader. Never used to read any books at all. Feeling good to say at least I have patience to read novels now. :)

List of books recently read. Coming soon the reviews of these books

Trip to Yercaud

2009-05-03T23:12:00.004+05:30

The plan:
Last month Shilpa, Sowmya and I were thinking that we need to go somewhere out, excluding all yelders. We thought May 1 and 2nd would be ideal. Then we decided upon place as Yercaud, which is around 200 KM from Bangalore near Salem.

Yercaud is a Hill Town and there are few places on the top of the hill including a Botanical Garden, Lake and boating, Ladies seat a view point to see lit Salem city in the evening, Killiyur Waterfalls, Pagoda point, Sheravarayan temple etc. 2 days would be more than sufficient for it. We decided to start on early morning of 1st May and come back by 2nd evening

The accomodation:
After few hours of browsing we got to know that Hotel Shevaroys is good and within the budget. We called tham immediately and blocked 2 rooms for triple occupancy. It costed Rs. 1500 per room

The Team:
Shilpa, Gowri - My nieces, Yashu - Bhargav - My nephews, Thimmi and I

The carrier:
My elder sister had recently baught Toyota Innova, we decided to take that. But due to elders insistance, we also decide to take Manju, driver as well.

Execution:
As planned we started at around 6 AM. We drove at a decent speed and took a lot of break on the way and enjoyed a lot. Few pics on the way

Stopped at A2B near Hosur and had delicious break fast and played kids games.

We reached Yercaud and checked into Hotel Shevroy. The hotel is very big and decent enough. Loved few architectral points.

After noon we went to the restaurant and found that its crowded like crazy. We went out and had a buffet lunch. Later we went to boating and found even that was crowded like hell. Where ever we went we could see only people. It was May day, and many people had long weekend and planned there. We never felt that we are outside Bangalore and never felt we have come for a trip. It was really awkward for us. We visited Ladies seat and enjoyed a bit by seeing monkeys over there. The view was good from there but again crowd put us down

Next day morning we found a portrait painter and Shilpa, Gowri and Sowmya posed for portrait painting.

Then we went for boating, and today crowd was reduced to half and we enjoyed peddling the boat

The we visited a temple called Shervarayan temple which was also a peak point. But there was lot of crowd and could not go inside the temple. While coming back we found many beautiful places and captured lot of pics..

While coming back to Bangalore we visited my Brother-in-law's farm house and enjoyed fire dance there.

Entire Photo Album:

My Trekearth Photos

2009-04-29T11:58:00.001+05:30

See more photos by karthikcs on TrekEarth

Portional Contrasting, a video tutorial

2009-04-16T22:36:00.004+05:30

This Adobe Photoshop Video Tutor helps in enhancing imaging using the concept of portion contrasting.

First try with video tutorial

Day out to Innovative Film City

2009-02-23T15:40:00.001+05:30

We had visited to Innovative Film City near Bidadi last Sunday (15-Feb-09). We started at around 10 AM and reached there by 10:30 AM. I had enquired about the package/ entry fees etc. Entrance fees is Rs. 50/- per person, which does not include any attraction. You have to pay for each inside. If you wish to take the entire package, it costs you 699/- which is cheaper than paying individually. It covers 11 major attractions.

There are many places to see in side. Entry ticket for each Cartoon city, Dynasaur museum, Miniature city – which kids enjoy a lot. Other attractions like Repley’s believe it or not, Wax museum, Funplex, 4D Movie are enjoyed the most by Teens and college boys/girls. There are attractions like Mini Golf, Go Karting, Aqua World, Mirror Maze and Haunted mansion which even elders can enjoy. This is excellent weekend get away.

Watch the Album:

An exposure to ‘exposure settings’

2009-02-10T14:38:00.001+05:30

I was discussing with one of my friends regarding exposure settings of a digital Camera, mostly DSLR or DSLR like cameras. In this article I would try to explain concepts of Aperture (F-Stop or F Number), Shutter Speed, ISO, Exposure Compensation, P, A, S and M modes.

Exposure:

Capturing a good picture is all about good lighting. Its not what light “you” see, its the light what camera sees. All the entities listed above are one way or the other linked with light that Camera sees. We call it as “Exposure”. A well lit picture is called well exposed picture, poor lighting makes it under-exposed.

Let us now try to see how all the above factors affect the exposure of a picture.

Aperture:

Aperture is the width of the lens opening, when you release the shutter. Larger the aperture, more the light goes inside the camera. Apertures are measured in F-Stops or F-Numbers (F/4 or F/5.6 and so on). Smaller the F-Number, larger the aperture. So, if you set aperture to be F/2.8 a lot of light is allowed inside. If you set it at F/22, very small amount of light is let in, when shutter is released. Learn more about about aperture here

Impacts of Aperture:

Aperture impacts the DOF (Depth of Field) of the picture. Higher the aperture (Small F-number) Shallower the DOF. Read more about it here

Shutter Speed:

Shutter speed determines how long the shutter is opened, when you release it. Higher the shutter exposure (measured in seconds), longer the shutter is opened and hence more light is allowed inside the camera. Example: As daylight is well lit, and hence shutter speed can be as high as 1/1000s, 1/2000s . Of course, this goes in conjunction with other exposure parameters likes Aperture, ISO etc. In poor light – Night shots, indoor shots, you might have to lower to 1/10 or even it can several seconds. But you should keep in mind the picture can be shaken as we go for long exposure.

Learn more about shutter speed here

Impacts of Shutter Speed:

Scene can be frozen with very short exposure. This can be used for moving objects. Example – Deepavali
We can get some dramatic effects of water falls or other moving objects with moderately long exposure. Example – Waterfalls, Bubbleman
Long exposure can cause shaky pictures. Tripod or Image Stabilized Lenses can reduce this problem. Example– Deepavali Group
Long exposure when not needed can also cause over exposed pictures Example – Flower Pot

ISO (Sensitivity):

ISO represents the sensitivity of the sensor. The concept of ISO was originated from film cameras. Each film would be having defined sensitivity measured in ISO equivalent number. In digital cameras the sensitivity is controlled digitally, which are equivalent to that of film roles. ISO Rating 100 being very low sensitivity and 3200, which is highly sensitive to the light. Thumb rule is, better lit place use less ISO and poor lit place (night, indoors) use higher ISO rating.

Learn more about ISO here

Impacts of ISO:

Higher the ISO, camera becomes very sensitive and starts recording unwanted light particles called Noise. Example Writing with experience
Moderately high ISO helps to get better exposure in bad lighting
Better to use lower ISO in well lit conditions. Example Day light

Mode of Shooting (P,A,M,S):

After understanding basics of above exposure parameters, let us try to understand how to use different modes. Which one to choose when. Before going further, we need to understand that camera exposes the light into the sensor based on all the settings mentioned above. So the net result depends on the current settings of the camera. The objective is to control these parameter effectively to get good picture.

NOTE: It is very difficult to manage all these parameter ourselves (M Mode). So most of the manufactures have given facility to fix few of the parameter and leave rest to the camera, so that it determines what should be the correct value of other parameters in that respective lighting condition.

Mode A (Aperture priority Mode) : In this mode you can capture a picture with fixed aperture. Camera will determine the appropriate shutter speed for that lighting condition and ISO setting. This is very useful when you want a specific DOF OR when you need a bokeh (Background blurr), you might want to use a specific wide aperture.

Mode S (Shutter Priority Mode): In this mode you can fix the shutter speed and let camera calculate the correct aperture for the current lighting conditions and ISO. This is useful when you know what should be the shutter speed. For example, you like to take a picture with long exposure say 8 Seconds, Night shot. Example Nighty Road. Another example would be, if you want to have some movement effect in your frame, instead of freezing. Example Kick the ball

Mode P (Programmable Auto Mode): This is favorite mode of many photographers. This would give blend of both A and S. You can change either S or A and other parameter is calculated automatically.

Mode M (Manual Mode): In this mode, camera switches its brain off. It is completely in your control. You can set Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO, White Balance and what not. This is not so easy unless you know what happens when you select a particular value. This is also an excellent way you learn about exposure settings. Takes loads of photos in M Mode and understand how you Camera Sees a frame.

Exposure Compensation:

With any of these above settings you can use exposure compensations which usually ranges from – n EV to +n EV. In my camera it is –5EV to +5EV. Suppose you do your settings at 0EV and capture a scene and found that it was under exposed. Now to improve the capture you can either change one of Aperture, Shutter or ISO OR you can simply change Exposure Compensation to +1EV. Camera automatically changes what ever it needs to get better exposed image. In reverse if the scene was washed out (Over exposed), you can make it –1EV to reduce the exposure.

Hope this helps…. Please provide your sincere feedback

Getting selective Focus – PS Tutor

2009-02-07T01:32:00.001+05:30

Many of my friends keep asking how I get selective focus. One way is it get a low depth of field (DOF) by using broader aperture. Broader aperture indicates smaller F Number. This is while capturing the image. Please read more about apertures and DOF in this link .

In this post I will try to explain simple post processing steps in Photoshop to get selective focus.

Objective: Get Selective Focus

Idea: Idea is very simple. Focused area of the image has more sharpness and remaining area would be less sharper. Human eyes tend to see sharper objects. So we can use this technique to cheat human eye to simulate shallow DOF during PP

Step 1: Open the image you want to Post Process (PP) in Photoshop (PS). You can see in this image DOF is not that shallow.

Duplicate the layer. Always do this step in PS as practice. You will not lose the actual image, if anything goes wrong later.

Step 2: Select quick selection tool (W) to select the area you want to focus. In case, you want to spend more time in precisely selecting the area, you can do in multiple stages. You can unselect by holding Alt key. You can also save the selection using the Menu – Select - Save Selection and provide a name. Note, this is the key step in this Workflow.

Step 3: Increase the brightness of the area of interest. As this is selected, only selected area will be brighten up, also increase the sharpness of the selected region using Smart Sharpen

Step 4: We are done with area of interest. Now we need to concentrate on Negative space. To select negative space, invert the selection

Step 5: Now blurr the negative space and reduce the brightness, so that eye does not really catch that area first.

Step 6: Final Image, which shows a shallow DOF. – OR – Selective Focusing

From Windows Live Writer

We can also use Motion blur instead of Gaussian Blur in case of object is moving. You can see an example

Converting your Photo into Sketch

2009-02-06T16:16:00.001+05:30

There was an excellent tutorial on DPS to convert your photo into sketch. I tried few of my pics. See the effect. I am trying to make an action (Automatic conversion)

Slumdog Millionaire – A Review

2009-01-28T14:29:00.001+05:30

With a lot of hype created, we saw this movie this weekend. The tone of my review would have been entirely different if Danny Boyle had not shown India with such disgusting manner. I can’t deny that he has shown truth, but there was no necessity to picturize and highlight India in that crude way. He shows how beggars are made from street kids, how they steal footwears and other stuffs from tourist places. My point is, there was no relevance for such scenes in context of the story at all. On the other hand there is no single positive feature shown on our society. I felt as if, this guy’s objective was to show dark face of our country and he had knitted the story around it.

Observe the following situation and dialog sequence:

A tourist (American) comes to visit Dhobi ghat. By the time drives escorts them back some mischief kids would have stolen the tyres and car driver finds on kid and beats him horribly. The crying kid begs in front of foreign tourist saying this is “True India” and tourist says now we show how True Americans behave and gives him $ 100 bill. What the heck.

This being directed by a Hollywood director and gathered such a hype would be watched by many foreign nationals. Why should they convey such an image to all of them. There is no passiveness in the movie at all. Also our kids and society also lose confidence and lose whatever pride we are having on the nation.

TNT – A Book Review

2009-01-25T22:54:00.002+05:30

The Next Ticket, is a not-yet-released book. I am feeling proud to write a review on this book as it is authored by my good friend Sridhar Machani.

The hero goes for a foreign trip without a destination and the whole story gets revealed in a nice manner. Story takes a twist suddenly and the pace becomes little faster and hero actually goes into complex maze of many people and many cities. He finds handful of opportunities to get out of it, but for some reasons (which Sridhar needs to explain) he goes into it again and again.

Last few pages are of novel run very fast, it could have been little slower. The novel is written in the first person and the narration of minute details really given a punch to the reader

Sridhar has taken as challenge and to complete the book with tight schedule and its really an achievement. He is also having plans to have iterative approach in building next few versions of the book. I heartily congratulate him and wish him all the best for publishing TNT

Workflow for Borders and watermarks

2009-01-22T21:56:00.001+05:30

Pre-Requisites:

You need to understand the basics of Actions in Photoshop (PS). Please go through the following blog post for the same

Creating a Photoshop Action

...Are you in the mood for some Action? I’m talking Photoshop Actions :) They are the perfect solution to handle tasks with one click. An Action is a recording of several Photoshop operations and commands. Once the Action is created, one click is all it takes and the task will be executed. It’s very powerful, can save you heaps of time and it’s ac...

Step 1:

Create a new Action Set of your own and create a new action within it.

Step 2:

Record following steps in your new Action. I have named it as “Watermark_Karthik”

Step 3:

Increase the canvas by 5px width and 5px height with color as Black. Increase all sides

(Find Canvas Size from Menu -> Image -> Canvas Size)

Step 4:

Picasa Content

Increase the canvas by 5% width and 5% height with color as White. Increase all sides

Step 5:

Increase the canvas by 5% height with color as White. Increase only bottom part. We can add text here.

Step 6:

Increase the canvas by 10px width and 10px height with color as Black. Increase all sides. This would serve as final border of the image.

Step 7:

Step 8:

Select background layer and merge visible

Step 9:

The final Action should show something as below:

Step 10:

We can re-use this Action as many times as needed by click on Action tool bar (Alt + F9)

Step 11:

We can also batch edit images by selecting

Hope this tutorial helps you to create the border and a water mark

Selected Shots from Sakaleshpur trip

2009-01-20T17:12:00.010+05:30

Trip to Sakaleshpur-Chikmagalur

2009-01-09T21:54:00.001+05:30

The plan:

It was during Anil's Marriage that we had initial discussion of going out somewhere during Christmas vacation. Initially we thought our family, Sushma's family and Srinand's family would make it. We thought Anil can not come as new couple would have planned for their honey moon. Due to unfortunate circumstances, it so happened that new couple could not make honey moon trip. On the other hand Srinand's family could not make it sue to new born. So it was more solid during second week of Dec that We both, Sush-Gautam and Aruna-Anil would be the team

More planning:

We initially had plans to make it somewhere in Chikmagalur or near by Shimoga region. Most of us did not want heavy adventures but loved to enjoy the nature. After a day of research we found coffee valley Home Stay near Sakaleshpur. I bought most of the members buy-in and thought of booking for 2 days. It was turning out to be little expensive and that's the time I realized that we could expand the trip to somewhere else as well restricting Coffee Valley stay for 1 day. Initially it was told that per person per day it would be Rs. 2000/-. Then they reduced a bit and within our planned budget. I booked for one day and planned Kemmannugundi for day 2.

The next we regarding vehicle. Gautam arranged his brother's Bolero four wheel drive for the trip and we decided self driving.

The schedule:

As trip was little tight, we decided to leave very early in the morning like, at around 5AM and reach Coffee Valley Estate at around 11 AM. On the way we visited Manjurabad fort and Bhimeshvara falls, near Sakaleshpur, . At the estate had lunch and rested till evening. Visited Sun Set spot which is very near to the estate and had Camp Fire and played some games like Dumb-Chardes, Adarsha Dampathigalu etc. Had dinner and went to bed. Most highlighted part of the day was "Food" and Host Mrs&Mr.Manjuth's hospitality. We just loved the place.

Host also appointed Chidananda, Chidu as we called him for all our comforts. Next day we all woke up at around 8 AM and had hot bath. Finished tasty breakfast and started towards visiting all beautiful places near by, guided by Chidu. We visited an old temple of Lord Bhairaweshwara and a peaceful lake nearby, where there were hundreds of hungry fishes. We fed them with some Mandakki. Captured hundreds of snaps and moved towards an unnamed waterfalls.

Spent couple of hours in the falls and enjoyed a lot and captured some stunning pics. Went back to estate for yet another tasty meals, which was actually not in the package. We were so impressed by the food, and told the hosts to make it for us and we would pay extra for the same. We checked-out after a series of Couple-Shots and moved towards Chikmagalur. Reached there by evening and rested for the day. We hesitantly stayed in average hotel called Raja Mahal in I.G road. It was not so clean place. But it was ok to spend a night. Most funny thing was their eye-catching multi-colored rooms. :)

Next day was again a hectic day. We visited Here-magalur Sri Rama temple. Priested by famous orator Sri. Heremagalur Kannan. We spent a lot of with him and enjoyed the stay there. Then we started towards Kemmannu Gundi. We decided to directly go to the Hebbe Falls. It was extra-ordinary drive on the rocky mountains to reach the leg of the falls. We started very late from there and reached Bangalore at late night by 1:30 AM

Photos:

Enjoy some of the photos of the trip:

Sunflower field on the way

From Sakaleshpur 08

Manjurabad Fort

From Sakaleshpur 08

From Sakaleshpur2 08

Coffee Valley Estate:

From Sakaleshpur2 08

From Sakaleshpur 08

Falls near Hanbal

From Sakaleshpur2 08

Hebbe Falls @Kemmannugundi

From Sakaleshpur2 08

Link for entire Album1 and Album2

ನಮ್ ದೇಶದ problemsಉ

2008-12-01T22:59:00.001+05:30

ನಮ್ ದೇಶದ problemsಉ ಒಂದಾ ಎರಡ. ರಾಜಕಾರಿಣಿಗಳು ತಮ್ಮ ವೋಟಿಗೋಸ್ಕರ ಅಫಜಲ್ ಗುರು ಅಂಥವರಿಗೆ supreme court order ಆಗಿದ್ರೂ ನೇಣ್ ಹಾಕಕ್ಕೆ ತಡೀತಾರೆ. ಅಂಥ ದರಿದ್ರ hard core terrorists ಗಳಿಗೆ ಲಕ್ಷಾಂತರ ಹಣ ಸುರಿದು legal ಆಗಿ support ಕೊಡ್ತಾರೆ. so called ಅಲ್ಪ ಸಂಖ್ಯಾತರು ಬಾಂಗ್ಲಾ/ ಪಾಕ್ ಗಡಿಗಳಿಂದ್ ನಮ್ ದೇಶದೊಳಗೆ ನುಸುಳಿಕೊಂಡು ಬರೋದನ್ನ ನಮ್ಮೋರು ದೂರ್ದಲ್ಲಿ ಕೂತ್ಕೊಂಡು ನೋಡಿ ಮಜಾ ತಗೋತಾರೆ. Infact ಹಾಗೆ ಬರೋರಿಗೆ, ration card, voters ID, Driving Licence ನಮ್ ದೇಶದವರಿಗಿಂತ ಬೇಗ ಕೊಡಿಸ್ತಾರೆ. ಯಾಕೆ .. ದರಿದ್ರ ವೋಟ್ ಗೋಸ್ಕರ. ನಮ್ಮ ದೇಶದ so called ಅಲ್ಪ ಸಂಖ್ಯಾತರು "no more" ಅಲ್ಪ ಸಂಖ್ಯಾತರಾಗುವ ಸಮಯ ದೂರ ಉಳಿದಿಲ್ಲ.

ಇಲ್ಲೇ ಹುಟ್ಟಿ ಬೆಳೆದು ದೊಡ್ಡವರಾದ್ರೂ, ಅವರಿಗೆ ನಮ್ಮ ದೇಶದ ಮೇಲೆ ಕಿಂಚಿತ್ತೂ ಅಭಿಮಾನ ಇರಲ್ಲ. ಅಲ್ಲೆಲ್ಲೋ ಸದ್ದಾಂ ಸತ್ರೆ ಇಲ್ಲಿ ನಮ್ ಶಿವಾಜಿ ನಗರದಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರತಿಭಟಣೆ ಮಾಡ್ತಾರೆ. ಪಾಕಿಸ್ತಾನ cricket ನಲ್ಲಿ ಗೆದ್ರೆ ಪಟಾಕಿ ಹೊಡೆದು ಕುಣಿದಾಡ್ತಾರೆ. ಯಾಕೆ ಇದೆಲ್ಲ ನಮ್ಮವರಿಗೆ ಕಾಣಿಸೋಲ್ವ ? ಅಥವಾ ಜಾಣ ಕುರುಡಾ ?

ಮೊನ್ನೆ ನುಸುಳಿದ terrorists ಗಳು ಇಲ್ಲಿಯವರ ಬೆಂಬಲ ಇಲ್ಲದೆ ಅಷ್ಟೆಲ್ಲ accurate ಆಗಿ ತಾಜ್/ಓಬಿರಾಯ್ ನ ಮೂಲೆ ಮೂಲೆ ಸೇರಿ ನೂರಾರು ಜನನ್ನ ಕೊಲ್ಲಕ್ಕೆ ಸಾಧ್ಯ ಆಗ್ತಿತ್ತ ?

ಇದಕ್ಕೆಲ್ಲ ಉತ್ತರ, revolution. ಜನ ಎದ್ದರೆ ದೇಶ ಉಳಿದೀತು.

ಸ್ವಾಮಿ ವಿವೇಕಾನಂದರು ಆವತ್ತು ಹೇಳಿದ್ ಮಾತು: "ಏಳಿ ಎದ್ದೇಳಿ" ಅಂಥ. ಅದನ್ನ ನಾವು ಈವಾಗ್ಲಾದ್ರು ಮಾಡ್ಬೇಕು.

Managing your shots..

2008-11-28T22:52:00.001+05:30

I was always wondering how great photographers manage their huge number of digital photos. How do they pick "The-one-great-shot" they captured on "The-one-great-moment". How do they group all similar photos together. How do they gather all extreme statistics.

In the same lines I was reading this article in DPS. I was really inspired by this article and started using Light Room 2.1 from Adobe. It has all that you want and would expect in a photo management tool. I can tag them, give captions, sort based on tens of meta data information. Group similar photos. All that I can do pretty fast.

Now, more or less I have built my basic catalog. I was really worried to see that I have got more than 13,000 photos (Not everything is my shot anyway). I could tag more or less everything and indexes have been built. I can now search based on content/ focal length/ aperture/ lens/ camera/ date/ tags/ treatment/ exposure settings/ flash status etc..

Light room also integrates seamlessly with PS4, that makes my life still more easier for editing my shots.

What is terrorism ??

2008-11-18T21:46:00.001+05:30

Dear friends, let me picturize a situation here before we come to the actual point of discussion. There is someone near your house, who is throwing stones at your window pane everyday - intentionally. First time you felt that it might be an accident and ignored the act. But, it repeats again and again, very frequently. Now, you become little diligent and observe and found that the awful act was being planned and conducted by your neighbor to destroy your house and your family peace. You also found that police could not help on this because your neighbor has a very good relationship with them. There is no one who can help you now legally.

I want to know what will be your next step ?

I am not justifying what Sadhvi Prajna Singh and Lt. Col. Purohit did in Malegoan. But, please let me know what is so wrong in revolting against such terrorism when nothing works, legally/ politically ? Society like India which has been immersed in slavery for thousands of years, will never understand this. More over our so called Hindu culture is so soft and broad minded that we never want to hurt anyone. SORRY!! It is not true. If you see Indian History and Mythology, all our Gods and Avataras of Gods have taken place to kill the evil and protect the Dharma. Now, if God is not helping us, we have to help ourselves.

Dushta Shikshana and Shishta Rakshana was always the concept.

Please read through this month Outlook Edition, French author FRANCOIS GAUTIER has written the facts and how cowards we are..

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20081110&fname=BMalegaon+Terror+%28F%29&sid=2

Moving on ... ACS to Logica

2008-10-28T14:54:00.004+05:30

I started my career with IBM on 8th Oct 2001 and joined ACS May 2007. Due to uncertainty there I had leave company and move on. Otherwise I had an excellent work environment. Missing my team..

I will be joining Logica on 30th Oct 20o8. Hope my new job would be good for me.

PS: You can view my post when I left IBM and joined ACS Systech --> Here

Phototrade Portrait Contest - Please Vote for me ..

2008-10-21T14:00:00.001+05:30

Vote for my photo!vote

Trip to Sri Lanka - The Photo Album

2008-10-17T14:00:00.000+05:30

Selected Photos - Quick Album

More Photos - Detailed Albums

Trip to Sri Lanka - Day 4 and 5 - Colombo

2008-10-17T10:23:00.001+05:30

Story Board:

The plan - Day 1 (Flight and Dambulla) - Day 2 (Sigiriya) - Day 3 (Kandy) - Day 4 and 5 (Colombo Beach)

The Photo Album -> Link

(Nanna Nambi please.. this is the last post)

The Colonial Hotel Mount Lavinia

Mt Lavinia is one of the best Hotels I have ever stayed. It has got 200 years of history. Excellent colonial beach hotel. The ambience make you feel pampered. We got the room in ground floor just beside the roaring sea shore. It was most exciting part of our stay.

4th day morning we got early in the morning and visited beach which was near to our room. There is a direct entry through a small gate. That part of beach was very ugly. But in the evening we asked the room boy who took us to an excellent place, which was private beach for Mt. Lavinia. It was as if we were in some dream. Only two of us were there and the breeze and sunset was great. It was very cloudy that evening and could not watch very good sunset. However we enjoyed.

Next day morning we went for city tour of Colombo. We just skimmed through all the places in car and visited a Hindu and a Buddhist temple. Finished lunch at an Indian Vegetarian Restaurant and did a lot of shopping in few malls and reached Airport by 4 PM. Our flight was scheduled for 6:30 PM. Till we reached Airport our trip did not have any problems.

Flight delay

Problems started after reaching airport. We saw that display board and realized that Bangalore flight is delayed until 11:10 PM. It was almost 5 Hr delay. We had to stay back in Airport itself. They provided dinner and we waited playing some dumb charades. By the boarding time we were dead tired

Business Class Upgrade

During boarding another funny thing happened. The lady at the counter just asked whether it was 2 of us. We told yea!!. She congratulated and told that as there was 2 seats empty in business class they have selected us for upgrading our seats to Business Class. We thought we had some luck :)

Baggage exchange

As I told, we were dead tired already. As we were in Business class out immigration and customs happened without any delay. It was already 12:30 AM by the time our baggage started to come. We had checked in 2 bags. We got them and ran to BMTC bus station and found the last bus was just waiting for us. We boarded and sat down as if we achieved something. By the time we reached Hebbal we got a phone call from co-passenger saying that we had actually taken his baggage. Oh! Man we realized both of the bags were so very identical we had done big MISTAKE. He was furious on us as well as on Airlines. I convinced him saying that I would drop the bag to his place, the next morning. He was not ready for that. He wanted it right away. I asked him where he stays and found that was Vijayanagar, which is really not too far from my house. We fixed a place at Vijayanagar and I reached home and rested for 15 min and took out my car to exchange the bags. By the time we went to bed, it was almost 3:30 AM.

....THATS ALL FOLKS.... (Nanna Nambi please.. this is the last post)

Trip to Sri Lanka - Day 3(Kandy)

2008-10-16T14:55:00.001+05:30

Story Board:

The plan - Day 1 (Flight and Dambulla) - Day 2 (Sigiriya) - Day 3 (Kandy) - Day 4 and 5 (Colombo Beach)

We reached Kandy on Day 2 evening from Sigiriya. We went to Panaroma Point and had nice views of the entire city from there.

Evening Cultural Dance Show

There was a cultural dance show at 5:30 PM. It was nice to see around 10 types of Sri Lankan Folk dance. Most of them were similar to Indian Folk Dance. There attire were attractive

Light Dance

Peacock Dance

Devil Dance

Some skillful circus with dance touch

At the end dance with fire

Tooth of Relic - Temple

Morning we checked out and started at around 9AM and reached tooth of relic temple, where it is believed that Buddha's tooth preserved. But main offering is done to the Tuskar at the first floor. Tooth is supposed to be preserved and opened only during "Parihara", where the Tuskar is taken out for procession around the city.

From there we moved towards Pinnawala elephant orphanage.

Pinnawala elephant orphanage

We reached elephant orphanage at around 2 PM. Elephant feeding is done for small elephants in feeding bottles at around 12 Noon. We missed it. However all the elephants were left in the river for bath. We saw them playing in water while having lunch. (Again Veg Noodles, nothing else)

Romantic giants..

After that we drove towards Colombo. On the way we drank so called - King Coconut -- Wow it was so sweet and tasty. We also captured a small baby enjoying King Coconut.

Yet another marriage we say on the way. I am not sure why new-weds were asked to sit on road side :-). Rohita told that it was Kandian type of marriage.

The Photo Album -> Link

The story Continues..

Trip to Sri Lanka - Day 2(Sigiriya)

2008-10-14T22:32:00.001+05:30

Story Board:

The plan - Day 1 (Flight and Dambulla) - Day 2 (Sigiriya) - Day 3 (Kandy) - Day 4 and 5 (Colombo Beach)

The Photo Album -> Link

The Sigiriya Rock:

We got up early in the morning finished break fast (Hardly got anything to eat. We ate bread-butter-jam and some fruit juice) and started to Sigiriya Rock by 8:30 AM. Rock is really hard to climb, its around 1000 ft high with 1200 steps. It was called Simha Giri - which means Lion Rock. You can see that it is in the shape of Lion Sitting.

The Story:

King Kashyapa built the entire fort and palace at Sigiriya around 1500 years back. Kashyapa's father had two wives, one from King's family and other was a keep. Kashyapa was keep's son. As a rule, Kingdom was given to Kashyapa's brother who belonged to King's family. Furious Kashyapa killed his own father and ran away towards Sigiriya and built this fort cum palace. He taken all the security measures to defend enemy attacks. It is believed that he lived for 18 years there and at the end, faced his brother on the battle field and he was on his elephant. For some reason his elephant turned towards right and the whole army thought that they have to move right towards Sigiriya and they ran off the battle field. Without any support King Kashyapa committed suicide.

Sigiriya has 2 palaces, one at the ground level, called Summer palace and other one on the top of this rock called Winter palace. King Kashyapa had 500 women servants. He painted each of their images on the walls of caves with natural paint. Currently only around 18 are remaining and rest have been destroyed either naturally or by Buddhist Monks. After King Kashyapa this area was occupied by Buddhists Monks who did not like women paintings and they destroyed most of them.

King had 3 gardens. One at the bottom called green garden, second in the mid height called boulder garden and the third at the top called Terrace garden. Excavations have been done by Unesco in 1982 and few minor re-constructions have been done. An amazing historical place to visit in Sri Lanka

Palace had 2 boulder entrances. It has got 2 reasons - One - For security, enemies can not attach with a mob, they have to enter one-by-one. This would be helpful for defenders to kill enemies. Two - It symbolizes performing "namaste" in two hands for the guests.

In the boulder garden, for the security purpose he had built boulder walls without cementing it and around them built the brick walls. So even if enemies broke brick walls, boulders would automatically fall on them, thus it was auto defense mechanism

Fresco Paintings:

After climbing around 1000 steps, we get spiral steps, climbing which we reach a cave where we can see beautiful fresco paintings.

Can't believe they are 1500 years old. Paints have been prepared using natural ingredients, that once painted could not be erased, not even by painter himself. There were some minor human errors during paintings which are still visible. Paint would have absorbed so well into the plaster they prepared over the rocky walls. Excellent technology at that age

The Lion's Paw:

After fresco painting we reached a platform kind of place called Lion's paw. There are 2 paws of Lion which is the actual entrance of Terrace Palace. There was the head of Lion also constructed using bricks, but due to natural calamities, that has been ruined.

Palace at the top

We reached the top and by that time we were dead tired. There are swimming pools of that time and ruined foundations of the palace. The view from the top is breath taking

Last 2 steps of Sigiriya rock

Waters in these swimming pools were all connected and used for pumping up the water from Sigirya lake to the top of rock.

Woow.. you can see white Buddha's statue far from Sigiriya rock. You can also see the path way down, we walked to reach the bottom of Sigiriya rock.

Elephant ride

After climbing down from Sigiriya rock, we were on the way to Kandy and found an elephant ride. We decided to take elephant ride for 2000 LKR :-)

Elephant's name was Monica and it was 25 Year young elephant. It eats 250 KG per day.

On the way to Kandy - Batiks

After elephant ride, we started towards Kandy, which was around 3 Hrs journey. On the way we saw Batiks, where

cotton clothes are colored in a very different manner. All the steps are shown on this picture. Initially they take white cotton cloth and artist will mark the design on it. Apply liquid wax on those areas where they want to retain white and let it dry. Later they dip in next lighter color of the frame, in above example, it is yellow. Then apply wax on those parts of cloths which they want to retain yellow (Elephant) and dip into next lighter color (i.e. red) and so on. The entire process would take tens of days. Its tough job

Artist drawing the design

Applying the wax

Dipping in color

We also dressed in Sri Lankan Attire

Dressing my thimmi

Posing for a click

The Photo Album -> Link

The story Continues..

Trip to Sri Lanka - Day 1 (Flight and Dambulla)

2008-10-14T08:25:00.001+05:30

Story Board: The plan - Day 1 (Flight and Dambulla) - Day 2 (Sigiriya) - Day 3 (Kandy) - Day 4 and 5 (Colombo Beach)

The Photo Album -> Link

The start:

It was quite hectic start on 8-Oct-2008. It was Ayudha Puja day. We had to finish puja at home and then start. Flight was at 10:30 AM and as it was international check in we had to be there by 7:30 AM. We had realized that there is a BMTC bus to Airport at 5:20 AM from Padmanabhanagar. We targeted for that and got up at 3:30 AM, got ready and performed all Pujas and started at 5 AM towards BMTC bus station. Bus was around 20 min late but it was very comfortable. Reached Airport very early at around 6:45 AM. We had plenty of time so we decided to have some coffee.

The Flight

It was Sri Lankan Airways. Good that everything went very smooth and it took off on time. It was very bright and sunny day and clouds added some charm to the whole weather. We clicked few snaps from within flight.

This is India's border - Aerial view.

We reached Colombo on time and by the time we came out after Immigration processes, it was around 12 noon. Our driver cum guide was waiting with placard at the arrival spot. His name was Rohita (pronounced as Rohitho)

Golden Temple at Dambulla

The route from Bandaranayake Airport, Negombo to Sigiriya was almost 5 Hr journey. It was Nissan car and comfortable for us. Only problem was it was very low in height and little difficult to get in and out.

The route: Started north towards Chilaw on A3 till we reached Bolwatta and turned right into a smaller road towards Kurunegala. From Kurunegala we took A6 towards Dambulla.

View Larger Map

Dambulla has very old cave temple on the rock and you can see newly built Golden Buddha Statue which is visible from very far also. It was already 5 PM by the time we reached temple and we were dead tired already. Rohita bought the entry tickets for us and we reached the top in 45 min. It has got 5 cave temples and lots of paintings on walls and roofs.

By the time we came out of temple and Sun was already setting. It was very beautiful

We went to Hotel Sigiriya in Sigiriya and stayed there. It was raining cats and dogs. Journey from Dambulla to Sigiriya was around 1 Hr.

The Photo Album -> Link

The story Continues..

Trip to Sri Lanka - The plan

2008-10-14T07:51:00.001+05:30

Story Board: The plan - Day 1 (Flight and Dambulla) - Day 2 (Sigiriya) - Day 3 (Kandy) - Day 4 and 5 (Colombo Beach)

The Photo Album -> Link

Deciding the Place:

Idea of this holiday started few months back. I had got a an award, a travel voucher from my company in the annual function. It was from Hammock Holidays. We decided to utilize it for an international trip. After discussing with my travel agent Johnson, our choices of destinations were either Thailand, Maldives or Sri Lanka. We details of all the three. We took around 10-15 days to just decide where we are going. Johnson should have really pissed off for the number of phone calls and different opinions we were asking.

Maldives was working out better but, it is just one Island-One hotel destination. Nothing much to do. I got similar opinion from my cousin Aruna, who had gone there for her Honey Moon very recently. Excellent destination for Honey mooners. But, this was around 10th Honey Moon for us :D. So we thought that's not the place.

Thailand, was again very good choice. Pattaya, Bankok and Phuket was under discussion. But due to Airport Taxes, BLR-BKK-BLR air fare was too costly for me. Also for Bankok to Phuket we should take another flight which adds on to it. Due to budget constraint, I had to drop Thailand.

Sri Lanka - Initially it did not really enthuse us, but later after discussing with my sister, who visited Srilanka 7 years back, we started liking it. But only problem was security and political uncertainty. But we just took risk and decide to go Sri Lanka

Detailed planning of Trip:

Johnson suggested to goto Kindy -1 day, Newara Eliya 1 Day, Bentota 1 day and Colombo 2 days. It was 5 nights/6 days. But I wanted to make it 4 nights/ 5 days. More over hr told Newara Eliya is exactly like our Munnar, so if you have seen Munnar, there is no need to visit it. Bentota has only beach nothing else. So for us, it was not so exciting. I spoke to my sister Roopakka, and got very valuable information regarding Sigiriya and Dambulla, which were plances of Historic importance as well and also understood Kandy is like our Ooty and not more than 1 days is needed to cover it. So I proposed that I need to visit Sigiriya and Dambulla and Kandy I wanted to make only 1 day instead of 2. Johnson was very concerned saying that the schedule will be very hectic. But I forced him to continue as I proposed and the final plan was worked out as follows

Day 1: Airport to Sigiriya and halt: Estimated Arriaval was at 11:45 and Airport to Sigiriya is 5 Hr journey. Ahh! that was painful to know. But Sigiriya rock will be closed by 5 PM. It was very difficult to finish Sigiriya that evening.

Day 2: Sigiriya Rock and Dambulla Cave temple. Move on to Kandy, watch cultural dance show and Halt

Day 3: Kandy city tour, botanical garden, gem factory, wood factory. Move towards Colombo visit Pinnawala elephant orphanage on the way. Reach Mt. Lavinia and Halt

Day 4: Colombo city tour, shopping, beach relax and halt

Day 5: More shopping and Airport drop

This was looking good, we were covering a historical plance, famous temples, hill station, cultural dance, Posh beach side hotel, shopping and all. We were happy and fixed for Sep 28th to 2nd Oct. Then I realized that Anil's engagement was on 1st Oct and we had Lalitha Panchami festival at home on 4th Oct. I did not want to miss engagement and disturb anything for festival at home. So I postponed for next week. It was 8th to 12th Oct.

Flight details:

There was another problem, Bangalore - Colombo does not run on Mornings every day. Only Monday - Wednesday it runs in the morning. Similarly not everyday we have flight back to Bangalore from Colombo in the evenings. Only Fri-Sunday we have evening flights. It got very nicely fitted in. Our plan was to leave on Wed (Morning flight) and planned to come back on Sunday (Evening flight). Which was perfect. If it was other way round, we would be wasting the whole day.

Maps:

View Larger Map

The Photo Album -> Link

Effect of Circular Polarizing Filter

2008-09-21T19:53:00.001+05:30

Gauthama, my NHS friend and photographic freak like me recently purchased Circular Polarizing Filter (CPL). We both were experimenting the effect CPL. We were amazed to see the difference. The basic purpose of CPL is to avoid and cut off unwanted and reflected light.. See the differences yourself.

In above two pictures first one is without CPL and second one is with CPL. You can see that unwanted reflection from floor is cut off. (Please bare with me, pics are under-exposed)

Picasa Content

In above 2 samples, you can observe the same difference. The unwanted reflected light from spec is avoided in second snap. Another similar sample below..

I am planning to buy a CPL next week.. :D

Macro Kit

2008-09-21T14:46:00.002+05:30

Gautham and I had to gone to R K Photos, in Majestic to buy Macro kit for me and a CPL (Circular Polarizing Filter) for him. The place look has amazing collections of accessories. I think thats best place where you can get all DSLR related accessorries in Bangalore

Macro lenc kit is set of 4 add on lenses, which will make possible to shoot very close up shot

Capturing Spider - "Again"

2008-09-09T09:22:00.001+05:30

This post is continued from Capturing Spider

Effort was again made to capture spider and its web today. Again at the same place. Thimmi and I were as usual taking a morning walk on the walking track near my house. I was astonished to see a beautiful spider web between plants. The spider itself was so huge and very different. Its web was knitted very differently. Have a look at it and comment on the same.

Front View:

From Spider_Web

Side View:

From Spider_Web

Rear View:

From Spider_Web

Zoomed View:

From Spider_Web

Entire Album:

Light Painting, its so fun...

2008-09-01T14:42:00.001+05:30

Are you seen painting. Ofc yes, who would have not seen. But I am asking about Painting on Air/Space? Yes!! I am not joking. The following photo is an example. This was taken in our room with full darkness and my thimmi is writing a loving heart in air and I captured this with my cam.. The concept is called as Light painting.

Aperture: F/3.8, Shutter: 8 sec, Focal length: 18 mm

One more example with same exposure values:

Get more technical information: http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/slow-shutter-shoot-out-3-slow-shutter-speed-techniques/

Capturing Spider

2008-08-27T09:00:00.001+05:30

Oh! man it is so very difficult to capture the spider and its web. Auto Focus does not work on web, because of its tiny nature. Background is again very important as the wen threads can be very thin. This morning while walking in the park I noticed few webs which attracted me. I cut short my walking and went back home to get my camera to shoot them. Here are some trials. Please comment.

PS:

Dont forget to visit my PhotoBlog and Rate the same

Cotton works

2008-08-26T22:40:00.001+05:30

In this post, I will try to explain cotton related items my mom does during festive season. We call it "Vastra", translated as clothing, which is offered to God during pooja. Next week we have Lord Ganesha and Godess Gowri pooja, which is very big festival all over India.

Step 1 - Loosen the cotton:

Raw Cotton contains lot of seeds and it will not be as feathery as shown below. It will be very dense. First step is to pull layers of cotton make it less dense.

You can see dense cotton and loosen cotton (on the plate) here ->

Step 2 - Creation of Threads

Above raw is converted as threads as shown below using hands and milk

Step 3 - Different Kinds

Different designs of threads are created using milk. Some of them will have bulb and flat as shown below.

Step 4 - Colorful decoration

Using Kumkum, the Vastra is decorated

Step 5 - All kinds

The round shaped flat structured vastra is specially made of "Ganapathi" and the bulb-flat design is offered to Godess Gowri.

Complete Album:

Trip to Chikmagalur

2008-08-25T22:57:00.001+05:30

Event:

It was Dhruva's marriage on 22nd Aug 2008, Friday. He had invited almost all high school friends. We decided to attend his marriage.

Plan:

Initially MS, Srinand, Pasha, Harisha, Teju, Gautham and myself had plans to travel to Chikmagalur in 2 cars. But gradually Pasha, Harisha and Srinand dropped for various reasons. Finally MS, Gautham, Teju and myself decided to travel in my car and Srividya G and Sidda came in their car. We got up very early at 4 AM and started at around 5 AM from from MS place.

Trip:

It was very dark when we started and lot of traffic in Tumkur. Narrow road, less lighting and High beam from oncoming lorries made the driving very difficult after taking left from Tumkur road. We stopped Kamat Upachar for break fast and I drove till Hassan and then MS took over. The last stretch was driven by Gautham. We reached the marriage hall at around 10 AM. It was just before Muhurtham. Had break fast again at the marriage and took some rest.

Photography:

Gautham and I went for some good photography around the place. There was a lake near by and found some fauna for our cameras. You can watch all photos here ->

I loved this insect --

So sweet girl

And this boy was very quite

Gautham, MS and myself

Return Journey:

Started back from there by around 5 PM and reached Bangalore by 11 PM. We felt air was little less in tyre but never found any place for air. So we drove very slow discussing on various topics. Stopped at a dabha near Nelamangala for dinner.

Photo Slide show:

Visit my Photoblog ->

My Photoblog

2008-08-21T22:36:00.001+05:30

All, I have started by photoblog. Please visit the same and share your comments. Thanks

Lalbhag Flower Show

2008-08-17T12:32:00.001+05:30

My friend Gautham, a.k.a Tamma (NHS Class Mate), invited me to Lalbhag flower show yesterday for capturing some snaps. He has also newly bought a DSLR Canon EOD 400D (Digital Rebel XTi). But the timings did not match and he went in the morning and I went in the afternoon. Have a look at few of my snaps..

Rate my Photoblog ->

I was gifted - Nikon D40

2008-08-17T12:05:00.001+05:30

I was always fascinated about DSLRs. In all my trips, I used to watch DSLRs brought by co-tourists and was dreaming to own it some day. My dear Thimmi was always silent observer of this desire of mine and made a plan to buy one from the US with her brother Sunil's help. She surprised me last week by gifting Nikon D40 (Reviews) with a tripod. I was so amazed at that moment. Thanks a lot Thimmi. Now on, I fill my blog with all the shots from my D40.

NHS Trip - Madikeri

2008-08-15T00:34:00.001+05:30

Story Continued from: NHS Off-Academic Trips -> NHS Trip - Pearl Valley -> NHS Trip - Yercaud

Trip to Madikeri was planned sometime in 1997-98. We were in 1st year Engineering, I think (Guys, please correct me if I am wrong). Plan was to visit Madikeri, Bhagamandala, Tala Kaveri - Birth Place of River Kaveri, Abbey falls, Kushalanagar and back home. You can also read my recent story on Madikeri trip. I am trying to recollect all the fact in this story. I barely remember.

We were very fond of train journey and hence took train from Bangalore to Mysore and from there we went to Madikeri by Bus. We rented a dormitory and all of us stayed in one room.

The group was Srinand, Sudhindra, Myself, Naga, MS, Harisha and Gopi. (Left to right in the pic below)

We visited Raja Seat and enjoyed the evening. I still remember the late evening, it was raining cats and dogs and there was no power and I had brought candle and matches as per my father's suggestions which helped a lot to kill the evening. The rain was really deadly and we had never witnessed such rains in Bangalore.

Raja Seat:

Why Naga is staring MS like that???

See the "iStyle"

Abbey Falls:

Next Morning we started and visited Abbey falls. Enjoyed a lot. Now, getting down to the falls is prohibited as it is very dangerous. But at that time, we could get into water.. Naga was very afraid of water and never touched the water..

I am really surprised to see Srinand getting wet in water..

Chaddi.. Whats happening man ??

Abba! Look at the faces..

Bhagamandala - Talakaveri:

We also visited Bhagamandala, Talakaveri. Some snaps..

Bhagandeshwara Temple at Bhagamandala

Tala Kaveri.

Nisarga Dhama:

While returning back to Bangalore, we visited Nisarga Dhama near Kushalanagar.

Complete Album Slide Show:

Story Board:

Pearl Valley -> Yercuad -> Madikeri -> Chunchi Falls -> Sangama - Mekedatu

Review: Deception Point by Dan Brown

2008-08-02T13:13:00.001+05:30

I was not a great reader. I had never finished any books completely. I don't remember what triggered me, I started reading this book with lot of dedication. I used to easily lose all the interest by the time I had finished half - that was my previous experiences. But now I have finished this book by Dan Brown, Deception Point. I am so happy that I am writing a review on this book.

Book is a scientific thriller. Dan Brown's other famous works are The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, and Digital Fortress.

Book keeps you interested till the time the suspense of - The "controller" is revealed. Its a very good mixture of politics, scientific facts and very adventurous. The tweaks and turns are very good. But I think final part of the book is little boring. You feel frustrated towards end.

My next read is Winning, by Jack Welch - as per Sri's Recommendation

NHS Trip - Yercaud

2008-08-01T00:40:00.001+05:30

Story Continued from: NHS Off-Academic Trips -> NHS Trip - Pearl Valley

This time it was decided that we go little far. We desperately wanted to go in train. We decided on Yercaud. But there was no train till Yercaud, which is a hill station. So we booked train till Salem and from there we went to Yercaud by bus. We took a dormitory. Enjoyed the whole trip. I still remember I lost my frizbee disk there.

Went boating, can see some snaps.. Also there are some view points, like Men's seat/ Women's seat. Trekked in the evening and enjoyed a lot. Team was (As I remember) MS, Harisha, Naga, Chaddi, Gopi, Tejaswi and Myself.

Boating at Yercaud:

You can see from left: Naga, Harisha, Chaddi, MS, Teju, Gopi and Myself

See this snap.. This is meee .. So funny.. yappa..

I am not very sure whether this was during Yercaud, some please correct me if I am wrong

Story Board:

Picasa Content

Pearl Valley -> Yercuad -> Chunchi Falls -> Sangama - Mekedatu

NHS Trip - Pearl Valley

2008-07-31T09:55:00.001+05:30

Story Continued from NHS Off-Academic Trips

I am really happy that I am writing this post. The photos I am going to attach here are as old as 13 Years. It was when we were all in High School. We used to trip a lot in bi-cycles. One of the adventurous trips was Trip to Pearl Valley, a.k.a "Mutyala Madu". As the name suggests, the falls here is very small and looks like fall of pearls. It is situated near Anekal. From Bangalore it is around 42 KM. We had packed food and carried food boxes as well with us. Each one of us had prepared an item. I still remember I had packed Curd Rice for all 8 of us.

Riders From left to right: Myself, Dhruvakumara (no alias), Anil M S (alias emme), Harisha (alias HG), Late. Nagaraja (alias Naga), Sri Chanda (chaddi's younger bro, alias chanda), Kiran Karanth (alias KK), Srinanda (alias Chaddi),

Guys, see those faces, they are all so funny. The attire the style, Wah! See my shoes, Emme's shorts, Harisha's cap, Naga's open-button shirt.

The route we took was Dairy Circle - Bannerghatta road - Meenakshi Temple - Bannerghatta National Park - Jigani - Anekal - Pear Valley

On the way we visited very famous Meenakshi temple. This photo was taken inside temple premises. See Naga's pose!!

Myself, Dhruva and emme. What a pose..

This is mutyala Madu, Pear Valley. Not so much of water. But enjoyed the trip

As usual emme did not wet himself. It was a great fun. Yeh.. Chaddi did not even touch water. hehe

Myself, MS, Chaddi

By the time we reached home was around 6:30 PM. My house was in Lakkasandra, very near to Bannergatta Road. We all assembled back there. This was the last shot. You can see my niece and nephews also.

Harisha is carrying Yashu, You can see Shilpa sitting between me and KK, Gowri is sitting on my lap. :-)

Story Board:

Pearl Valley -> Yercuad -> Chunchi Falls -> Sangama - Mekedatu

NHS Off-Academic Trips

2008-07-22T14:02:00.001+05:30

We have tripped a lot when we were in National High School. Most of them were off-academic trips. Let me try to list down all of them. Most of the trips were on bi-cycle.

Doddalada Mara
Meenakshi Temple
Bannerghatta
Pearl Valley (Mutyala Madu) - I have photos
Chunchi Falls -
Madikeri - I have photos
Yercaud - I have a couple of photos
Nandi Betta
Sangama - Mekedaatu - MS, Srinand and my family trip - I have photos

I think I am missing few more. Guys can you please help me in making this list as elaborated as possible? I am also trying to collect all photographs during those trips. Please help me. When I counted few years back I remember the list of having 11 trips. So I must be missing 3 more.

Story Board:

Pearl Valley -> Yercuad -> Madikeri -> Chunchi Falls -> Sangama - Mekedatu

ಗುರು ಪೂರ್ಣಿಮೆ

2008-07-21T22:45:00.001+05:30

ಪ್ರತೀ ವರ್ಷದ ಆಶಾಢ ಮಾಸದ ಹುಣ್ಣಿಮೆ ದಿನ ಇಡೀ ಭಾರತದಲ್ಲಿ ವ್ಯಾಸ ಪೂರ್ಣಿಮೆ ಅಥವಾ ಗುರು ಪೂರ್ಣಿಮೆ ಎಂದು ಆಚರಿಸಲಾಗುತ್ತದೆ. ಭಾರತದಲ್ಲಿ ಗುರುವಿಗೆ ಅತ್ಯಂತ ಮಹತ್ವ ಕೊಡಲಾಗಿದೆ. ’ಗುರು ದೇವೋ ಭವ’ ಎಂದು ಹೇಳಲಾಗಿದೆ. ಮನೆಯೆ ಮೊದಲ ಪಾಠಶಾಲೆ ಅಮ್ಮನೆ ಮೊದಲ ಗುರು ಎಂದೂ ಸಹ ಹೇಳಲಾಗಿದೆ. ’ಕಲಿಸಿದಾತಂ ವರ್ಣಮಾತ್ರಂ ಗುರು’ ಎಂದು ನಾವು ನಂಬಿದ್ದೇವೆ. ಮೊನ್ನೆ ಶುಕ್ರವಾರ ಗುರು ಪೂರ್ಣಿಮೆ ಇತ್ತು. ಅದರ ಸಲುವಾಗಿ ನನ್ನ ಜೀವಮಾನದ ಎಲ್ಲ ಮಹತ್ವದ ಗುರುಗಳನ್ನು ನಾನು ನೆನೆಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಇಚ್ಚಿಸುತ್ತೇನೆ. ಇದರ ಮೂಲಕ ಅವರೆಲ್ಲರಿಗೂ ನನ್ನ ಮನಃ ಪೂರ್ವಕ ವಂದನೆಗಳನ್ನು ಅರ್ಪಿಸುತ್ತೇನೆ.

ಹೆಸರು	ವಿವರ
ಅಮ್ಮ	ಏನು ಬಿಟ್ಟಿದಾರೆ ನಮ್ಮಮ್ಮ. ಇನ್ನೂ ಕಲಿಸ್ತಾನೇ ಇದ್ದಾರೆ ನಮ್ಮಮ್ಮ. ನಾನು ಹುಟ್ಟಿದಾಗಿನಿಂದ ಮಾತು, ನಡಿಗೆಯಿಂದ ಹಿಡಿದು, ವಿವೇಕದ ತನಕ ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಹೇಳಿ ಕೊಟ್ಟಿದ್ದಾರೆ
ಸರಸ್ವತಿ ಟೀಚರ್	ನರ್ಸರಿ ಟೀಚರ್
ಎಲ್. ಪಿ. ಟೀಚರ್	ಪ್ರೈಮರಿ ಟೀಚರ್
ಸೋಮಣ್ಣ ಶಾಸ್ತ್ರಿಗಳು	ಬ್ರಹ್ಮೋಪದೇಶ, ಸಂಧ್ಯಾವಂದನೆ ಇತ್ತ್ಯಾದಿ
ಏ.ವಿ. ಸತ್ಯನಾರಾಯಣ	ಹೈಯರ್ ಪ್ರೈಮರಿ ಸಾರ್. ನಮಗೆ ಬುನಾದಿ ಹಾಕಿ ಕೊಟ್ಟವರು
ಕೆ. ಎಸ್. ಟೀಚರ್	ನೀತಿ ಪಾಠ ಹೇಳಿ ಕೊಟ್ಟವರು
ಎಸ್. ಎಸ್. ಟೀಚರ್	ಗಣಿತ ಹೇಳಿಕೊಟ್ಟವರು
ಸುಬ್ರಮಣ್ಯ ಅಡಿಗರು ಸತ್ಯ ನಾರಾಯಣರು ಲಕ್ಷ್ಮೀಕಾಂತರು	ನನಗೆ ವೇದ ಪಾಠ, ದೇವರ ಪೂಜೆ, ಪವಮಾನ ಸೂಕ್ತ, ರುದ್ರ, ಇತರ ಸೂಕ್ತ ಗಳನ್ನು ಹೇಳಿ ಕೊಟ್ಟವರು
ಶ್ರೀಧರ್ ಹೆಗ್ಗಡೆ	ಸಂಸ್ಕೃತ ಹೇಳಿಕೊಟ್ಟವರು
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ಇನ್ನೂ ಅನೇಕರು .. ಮತ್ತೊಮ್ಮೆ ಮುಂದುವರೆಸುತ್ತೇನೆ. ಸದ್ಯಕ್ಕೆಇವರಿಗೆಲ್ಲ ನನ್ನ ಅನಂತಾನಂತ ಪ್ರಣಾಮಗಳು

Madikeri - Kushalnagar- Abbey Falls

2008-07-20T20:11:00.001+05:30

Story continued from Trip to Nagarahole - Coorg -> Drive into Nagarahole -> Chilligeri Estate -> Irpu, The Falls -> Waynad (Kuruva, Tirunelli) -> Talakaveri - Bhagamandala

Friday Evening:

We arrived at Madikeri on Friday evening and were very hungry. As it was too late (4PM) we could get only some snacks. Had bajji's and coffee near Raja Seat. We still did not have a booking to stay. On the compound of Raja Seat we found ad of Hotel Hilltown. Looked good and called them, and found it had accommodation. It was near Bus stand, went there and found it was pretty ok. Checked in there and went to visit Raja Seat. It was around 6:00PM, and completely misty. There was musical fountain and enjoyed a lot

Enjoy the Video:

Abbey Falls:

It was Monday morning and we had start early so that we can reach Bangalore as before dark. I wanted to avoid night driving. But we had still not seen Abbey falls. It was morning 7 AM we started to visit the falls. Had early break fast and started 7 KM drive towards the falls. We reached at around 7:30 AM and it was unmanned and raining heavily. We witnessed wide falls in the beautiful rainy morning and can not forget the scene for the life. Please witness the same in the video.

Kushalanagara:

While driving back to Bangalore we stopped at Dubbarey Elephant camp which is found with 10 KM diversion from main road before Kushala Nagar. Then we visited Kushala Nagar Nisarga dhama and Buddist camp. All was very fine. Enjoy the videos

From Kushalanagar we drove straight into Bangalore. By the time we reached Bangalore it was around 8PM. Since them till now I still have trip hang over!!

Story Board:

Drive into Nagarahole -> Chilligeri Estate ->Irpu Falls -> Waynad (Kuruva, Tirunelli) -> Talakaveri -> Madikeri/Kushalanagar

That's All Folks!!!

Talakaveri - Bhagamandala

2008-07-16T10:20:00.001+05:30

Story continued from Trip to Nagarahole - Coorg -> Drive into Nagarahole -> Chilligeri Estate -> Irpu, The Falls -> Waynad (Kuruva, Tirunelli)

Sunday Morning:

Got up around 7AM and got ready and had break fast at the restaurant. Started to Talakaveri by 10AM. It's 42 KM from Madikeri and the scenic beauty during the travel is amazing. It doubles during the rains. Both sides of road you can see coffee and spice plantations. Roads are very good.

We reached Bhagamandala in less than an hour and visited Bhagandeshwara temple. There is a triveni sangama at this place. Kaveri, Kannike and Sub terranian Sujyoti (Gupta Nadi) meet here. Due to rains again, we could not get into waters.

Talakaveri:

Road after Bhagamandala towards Talakaveri becomes very curvy and ghat section begins. I loved driving in that road too. As we drove up the hill and altitude increased, we could see substantial difference in climatic conditions. We could witness mind blowing mist at that altitude and enjoyed a lot. You can also see the video below and enjoy the same. We could hardly see anything at a distance more than 10 feet. We offered pooja to Lordess Kaveri, visited Shiva temple up hill and started back. They have improved a lot in Talakaveri.

The Video:

Story Board:

Drive into Nagarahole -> Chilligeri Estate ->Irpu Falls -> Waynad (Kuruva, Tirunelli) -> Talakaveri -> Madikeri/Kushalanagar

Waynad (Kuruva, Tirunelli)

2008-07-11T09:12:00.001+05:30

Story continued from Trip to Nagarahole - Coorg -> Drive into Nagarahole -> Chilligeri Estate -> Irpu, The Falls

Next Day Morning:

As I told you we had decided to check out the next day morning. With lot of reluctance, Land Lady agreed. We packed everything early in the morning at around 8 AM. There was another couple arrived that morning from Bangalore. They had reached Chilligeri through bus. The fact amused me was, they did not know it would be raining so much and did not even had umbrellas for them. They thought it was very near to Madikeri. Then in the bus someone told to get down and catch another bus towards Kutta and Manchally it seems. They arrived at around 4AM in the morning.

New Recipe:

Morning break fast was comprised of Bread-Butter-Jam which both usually don't like. There was another choice for us, which was looking like Chapathis, but tasked like Rotti. I asked the made what is that called, "Rotti Akki" she told. Which was funny any way. I then asked Land Lady about the recipe she told the procedures.

The procedure: Cook rice, mix it with rice flour similar to Chapathi dough. Then using pappad maker flatten it and cook on "tava". We want to try it, not yet done anyway.

Crossing the borders:

Moving out of Chilligeri, we drove south towards Waynad forest area. We saw Karnataka-Kerala border in juts 2 KM. Crossed borders and entered Kerala. The roads improved immediately. The inside-forest drive of Waynad was as good as that of Nagarahole. But did not see much animals.

Tirunelli Temple:

After around 10 KM we got a merger from right, from Tirunelli. Turned right and drove another 8KM curved roads towards the temple. It is Lord Vishnu's who is the standing posture. Looks beautiful. You need to climb around 50-60 steps. The temple was under renovation. We also donated some amount for the same. The scenic beauty with misty mountains was really astonishing. You can enjoy the same in the video below

The Un-Visited Kuruwa:

As I told you we had visited Waynad from IBM in 2005-Aug. I need to blog another successful love story of this trip. But the point is we did not visit Kuruwa in that trip. I was hoping at least I can visit it in this trip. Kuruwa is around 23 KM from Tirunelly. You should actually travel back to the same junction you reached while coming from Waynad Forest. After around 20 KM you get a small deviation towards your right which leads towards Kuruwa. The the more adventurous drive started. The road was bad, unmanned more over there was a tree fallen on the road. I had to somehow cross it and reach the ferry pick up point. But alas, deu to rains, we could not cross the river and only could go near river and ferry pick-up point and see Kuruwa from far. :-(

Move on to Madikeri:

After viewing Kuruwa from far, we started directly towards Madikeri. We had to rewind back the whole road trace till Kutta and move towards Gonikoppa-Virajapet and reach Madikeri. By the time we reached it was around 4 PM. We had not yet had Lunch. The total drive was almost 100KM.

The Video:

Story Board:

Drive into Nagarahole -> Chilligeri Estate ->Irpu Falls -> Waynad (Kuruva, Tirunelli) -> Talakaveri -> Madikeri/Kushalanagar

Irpu: The Falls

2008-07-09T10:06:00.001+05:30

Story continued from Trip to Nagarahole - Coorg -> Drive into Nagarahole -> Chilligeri Estate

The Drive:

We started at around 3PM on Friday towards Irpu, which according to Land Lady was only 2 KM from Estate. By the time I reached the falls my meter read around 7 KM. Roads were very bad. The scenic beauty overdid the bad the bad roads. The mist was amazing. We could hardly see tips of Brahmagiri Hills.

The Falls:

I had visited Irpu when I was in 7th grade. Man there was no comparison. It was like a tap water when I visited long back. But now, the sound at the gate itself was hinting me that the falls is huge. There is an entrance and parking fee (About 10 bucks per person and 10 for my car, dont remember exactly). I could see amazing improvements on the pathway towards the falls. There was not problem to reach the falls even though it was pouring. The whole pathway is cemented and no chance of skidding. I liked it..

After 15 min of climbing up the Brahmagiri hills, we could see the gigantic falls. Wow.. I never expected that our trip would turn so beautiful suddenly. Enjoy the video

Story Board:

Drive into Nagarahole -> Chilligeri Estate ->Irpu Falls -> Waynad (Kuruva, Tirunelli) -> Talakaveri -> Madikeri/Kushalanagar

Chilligeri Estate

2008-07-08T09:55:00.001+05:30

Story continued from Trip to Nagarahole - Coorg -> Drive into Nagarahole

The Estate:

After adventurous drive into Jungle, we exited Nagarahole, and after few minutes drive we entered the village called Kutta. From here, we need to take some deviation towards Manchally Village. People here talk Kannada, Kodava and also Malayalam. The drive from Kutta to Chilligeri is only 2 KM but very scenic. The road from Kutta goes towards Srimangala and after around 2 KM you get a small diversion towards Manchally Village. The scenic beauty doubles after entering this road. You have farms on both sides of road and this leads to The Jade and as well as Chilligeri.

The Chilligeri estate is good, not that great. They have a very old house, as old as 100 years. Owner Somaiah and family stay there. His wife, Banu runs the entire show. She welcomed us with Amazing Coorg coffee and showed us our room which was inside her house. We felt very uneasy to stay in someone else's house. And then I walked around the entire estate and realized that there is another out house with 4 rooms. I asked her whether we can get one there. She agreed and we moved into one of the rooms there.

The Flora:

Estate contains lot of vegetation on Coffee, Banyan, beetle leaf, jack fruit, Moosambi, Sapota , spices. It was raining almost all the time we stayed there. Initial plan was to stay 2 days and roam around a lot. Also visit, nagarahole safari, Wayanad Forest Safari, Kuruva island, Tiruneeli Temple etc. Heavy rains ruined our plan and we decided to check out the next morning. The lady gave us some trouble by asking 2 days' rent and leave, but then she agreed after realizing we can not do much in the heavy rains.

We went to Irpu falls in the afternoon and enjoyed a lot. I will write another post for Irpu falls.

The Food:

The food provided was good enough. May be meat eaters would have enjoyed more by having Coorg-famous pork. We also enjoyed rice, rasam, sambar, curry and pappad. Enjoyed a lot the next morning during break fast. She had prepared a kind of Roti, she called it as Rotti-Akki. Learnt the recipe of the same and checked out in the morning.

The Video:

Story Board:

Drive into Nagarahole -> Chilligeri Estate ->Irpu Falls -> Waynad (Kuruva, Tirunelli) -> Talakaveri -> Madikeri/Kushalanagar

Drive into Nagarahole

2008-07-06T14:14:00.001+05:30

This story is continuation of Trip to Nagarahole - Coorg

The Realization

Thursday night I kept 3 Alarms at 3:45 AM, 4 AM and 4:15 AM for the next morning. We both were determined to leave latest by 5:30 AM. I got up for the second Alarm at 4AM and woke Thimmi as well. Both got ready by 5 and started at around 5:15 AM. To reach Mysore road from my home takes around 10 min. One I was there, the fun began. I could rip my car at around 100-120 till I reached Mandya. We have our favorite restaurant called Sharada Restaurant. We had tasted when we had visited Mysore few years back (Ooops I have not blogged that trip yet!!). As it was just 7 AM and restaurant was just open, we could get only coffee and upma. We sipped the drink and moved on. At Srirangapattana we deviated as per the route discussed, I took right towards Ranganatittu and Hunsur. By that time it was around 7:30 AM. Had breakfast at Hunsur. After Hunsur, I knew it was full of Jungle till I reach Chilligeri estate, so we had to force some food in.

From Hunsur it takes less than 15 min to enter Nagarahole Jungle. At the entrance, you have to give all your and your vehicle details to the security guard and enter in. Note: Two wheelers are not allowed inside. The fun stated from there onwards:

The Jungle Road, welcome by Jumbo

It was just around 8AM when we were into deep jungle of Naragahole. The roads were empty, it was complete silence. You can feel it in the video below. After few distance we could witness a Jumbo Elephant on the road. We were just speachless. Happy, scared and confused.. Wow that moment were amazing..

After some distance from there, we could witness a lot of Deers. We moved towards National Park Entrance via Murkal. At Murkal there is an Elephant camp, but there is no permission for public to go inside. We could see few elephants standing outside.

Story Board:

Drive into Nagarahole -> Chilligeri Estate ->Irpu Falls -> Waynad (Kuruva, Tirunelli) -> Talakaveri -> Madikeri/Kushalanagar

Trip to Nagarahole - Coorg

2008-07-06T13:48:00.001+05:30

The plan: It was just routine work and both of us were tired like hell. We first decided that we are going out somewhere, and I decided myself that this time we are going in our car. First choice was Chikmagalur. Thimmi's colleague had recently gone there and enjoyed a lot itseems. She expressed that we go there. The place where they stayed was Nature Nirvana. I called for accommodation for weekend of 27-29 Jun. It was not available. I asked for the next weekend, even though it was available I did not book because I realized that it was heavily raining and roads are very bad during this season.

So the next choice was Coorg. After a lot of research on net I found this blog post, which talks about South Coorg and beautiful drive inside jungle. I was more excited about drive within jungle that anything else. More over the place was very well situated, which is amidst, Nagarahole, Waynad, Kuruwa, Irpu and complete jungle. I also got the Estate Stay information from the same blog post and called them and got the accommodation and booked for 2 days. Land Lady insisted me to deposit 50% amount into the specified SBI account. I did the same and got confirmation the accommodation.

Accommodation Details:

Chilligeri Estate
P.O. Box – 167, Manchally Village & Post,
Kutta, S. Kodagu. Pin – 571 250.
Ph : 08274 – 244265. Mobile : 94485 82496.
Contact : Mr. T. T. Somaiah / Mrs. Banu

Tariff - Rs. 1000/- Per person per day.

Other good places to stay is The Jade. This place also very near to Chilligeri and better than it. I did not get accommodation there. The rate was also almost same.

The preparation:

As I was driving this time, I wanted to be more cautious of routes. I did research on Google Maps and found the complete route till Chilligeri estate in Kutta from my home. I got all the printouts highlighting major land marks on the maps. I really started loving Google Maps after that. I could trace all the roads even within Jungle on the Google Maps. Another risk I had anticipated was - Plan was to start very early in the Friday morning like around 5 AM, so that traffic is very less and I don't miss the entire day. In that early morning I would not get much people in the jungle to ask for the routes if I miss. Find my entire route document below:

Other than the route, a lot of planning was made. I had already serviced my car and checked all the tyres and made it full tank. I know it was a rainy season and took good jackets and very importantly 2 umbrellas and a torch. Made sure both of us have both slippers and trek shoes and warm clothing. Took 5 Lts of water cans. Charged my camera, handy cam and cell phones.

Keep tuned to this blog to see more on following

Story Board:

Drive into Nagarahole -> Chilligeri Estate ->Irpu Falls -> Waynad (Kuruva, Tirunelli) -> Talakaveri -> Madikeri/Kushalanagar

Trip to Coorg

2008-07-01T13:40:00.001+05:30

Wow... its over.. uff.. so nice.. Safely reached.. Enjoyed a lot. In few lines if I have to say about my adventure..

---> Great drive, Full of rain, Amazed about mother nature, drove for about 800 Kms in 4 days, smooth car, lovely companion

Stay tuned for more stuff on this trip..

Story Board:

Drive into Nagarahole -> Chilligeri Estate ->Irpu Falls -> Waynad (Kuruva, Tirunelli) -> Talakaveri -> Madikeri/Kushalanagar

Bob'son'

2008-06-25T10:37:00.001+05:30

My colleague's name is Bobson,
Who was recently gifted with a son
Bobson named his son - Bob
So, Bob's Father name is BobSON !
And, Bobson's Son's name is Bob !!

Weird huh ?

Our next adventure .. To South Coorg

2008-06-24T00:20:00.001+05:30

Oh man, I am excited. We are driving to South Coorg, to a place called Kutta, which is very near by Nagarahole, Irpu falls and Waynad. I spent around 3-4 hrs today on Google maps to identify the entire roads starting from Bangalore to Kutta. It will be total of around 6 hrs journey. Around 240 KM. Out of which around 50 KM will be inside Nagarahole Forest. Wow! I am excited.

This is not actually a very good season to go to that place, we are taking little risk. We want to enjoy rains as well.

The Plan: Thimmi and I will be leaving home very early in the morning on this Friday at around 4:30 - 5 AM. I will be driving the entire stretch. Plan is to reach Nagarahole forest area as early as possible. I think it will be around 8:30 AM. This will make the drive more excited. Rest of the plan to visit different places will be made then and there. Plan is to come back Sunday night, if get crazy, will be taking Monday also off. Just want to get lost man..

The Route: The route will be Bangalore - Mysore - Mysore Ring road towards West and reach Hunsur SH 88 - HD Kote road - Nagara Hole forest - Gonikoppa Road - Kutta. We have already booked accommodation at Chilligere Resort, which is just few KM away from Irpu falls.

The Places: Nagarahole, Waynad, Irpu Falls, Kuruva Island, Kushala Nagar, Abbey Falls, Lakshmana Thirtha, Madikeri etc

Preparation: Driving map is ready, Accommodation is ready, packing in progress,

View Larger Map

Day out to Lumbini Garden

2008-06-14T16:14:00.001+05:30

It was a lovely Sunday morning we decide to go to Lumbini Garden at Nagawara. I had never been there but heard of good things about it. Thimmi and I started at around 11 AM and reached there by 12 noon. You can see route at attached map.

Coming from Mekhri circle towards Hebbal flyover take diversion towards east in the outer ring road. From there it is around 3-4 KM and you get in your left side.

View Larger Map

Entrance fee: 30 per person and 30 per camera Very nice place for kids, boating (general and peddle). They also have some water games. Not so great, but nice for weekend get away. Lots of games for kids.

You get all kinds of food there. Boating was very nice. Worth a visit..

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