light of heaven and i'm so happy.

I never knew about the importance of giving credits to the photographers when we are using their photos on our blogs or websites until my sister told me about it. Since then I've been crediting photographers of every single picture I'm using on my blog. 

I used to wonder how that really matters - pictures are free anyway. At least those we find in SXC. And now, I stopped wondering. Guess what? Few days ago I received an email from one Mr. Kevin Petrie asking me permission if he can use my photo. I've no words to explain how happy I was. I replied saying he can use my photo and also asked if he can send me the link of the final work though I didn't expect it.

And here he comes with the link. Light of Heaven - I didn't get a chance to listen to the full song for its not free. Just heard the preview and its wonderful. And I took that picture - top left - the candlelight. It's the same picture for this blog.

I'm so happy that my photo was of some use to someone somewhere in this world. It's more like an inspiration for me to take more photos. I'm loving my camera. I started uploading my pics in SXC and even they have an approval process. I uploaded around 30 pictures and only 7 got approved. They give me a feeling that whichever photo gets approved are good.

You can download them and comment if you like it. The profile is here and my gallery is here.

PS: No photo credit for this blog for I'm the owner of this photo.

speak of the devil.

Its been so long since I met her. Not even a glance. I don't know why is she so busy these days - her status always shows red and I hate it. I tried to message her once. No reply. Argh! I don't understand why I keep embarrassing myself all the time. I should really stop thinking about her or keep looking for her.

The other day I thought I saw her. I saw her friends actually. She always goes with them and my heart always skips a beat when I see not just her but anyone in her group. It's really weird of my heart to pump adrenaline whenever I see any of them.

Speak of the devil and She shall appear - right in front of me.

I'm not sure if I've seen anyone else who looks so consistently beautiful - from any angle. Or in anything she does - you name it and she is just perfect.

Photo Credit: Cris Watk / Image / Website

flipkart. 1. 2. 3. and counting.

I'm not so sure about what's happening with Flipkart these days. Is it just for me or is it because of the items I purchase or God-knows-what?

Incident 1:

I purchased a book - A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane around a month ago. It was supposed to deliver within 7-8 business days and so it did. I was happy that I got the book because I'd been searching for that book for a long time. I opened the cover and I was shocked. I mean, literally. The book looked OLD even before I opened it. I thought that's how the book might be for I've seen new books which look old. I opened it and went through the pages. I felt the book and its pages are flexible than it really ought to be. I checked the back-cover and there it was - a writing. It wasn't visible. It was pencil-written-and-then-erased. It didn't fail to leave a mark though. It was a used-book and I didn't want to spend Rs.550 on a used book. I contacted Flipkart and they arranged for a reverse pick up.

Incident 2:

Another book again - Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. I wanted to buy that book because I loved the movie. Again, I had to wait for 5-6 business days. At the end of 6 business days, my order got cancelled. I was like- WTF. I contacted Flipkart again. They said the book is Out-of-stock and they will refund the money to my wallet within 7-10 business days. They made me wait all these days just to cancel my order. They could have done this before.

Incident 3:

Not a book this time. It was a camera bag. Again I spent 3k for this camera bag and as usual I had to wait for 7-8 business days. It was mentioned that the product will be shipped on so-and-so date and delivery date would be so-and-so. I waited all these days and the status was still 'Processing' even on the day it was supposed to be shipped. It was supposed to be delivered yesterday and the status was still 'Processing'. I contacted them again. They said they will check the status and let me know within a business day and apologized for the delay. Okay, whatever. And today, the order got cancelled because the product is Out-of-stock and informed me that the money will be refunded to my wallet.

I'm not sure what these people are doing. But you are FLIPKART guys, for crying out loud. I've bought more than 75 items and have spent more than 50K and I'm really surprised to see something like this happening. Happening once is fine. This is the third time. Please keep your inventory updated or  ask your vendors to keep you posted. Checking the inventory once the order is placed isn't a good practice. I hope you guys are not falling behind on quality and services. I've been a strong supporter of Flipkart and will always be. Just, don't let things like this happen again.

Photo Credit: T Rolf / Image

this isn't happening.

This was happening too frequently to be a coincidence. She’s there, again. 

She’s looking at me. She’s making me blush. I look at her. She's smiling - that ever-so-gorgeous smile. I want to sit closer to her. It stinks here. Let’s sit somewhere else, I say. No, he says. It doesn’t matter. I can see her. I’m sure she can see me too.

I can see her looking at me. Our eyes meet a hell lot of times. It’s making me embarrassed. I don’t regret. She’s so beautiful. Next time I should come alone. He always insists to come along with me. I can’t just ignore him. Of course I can. 

I know she likes me. And I like the fact that she likes me.

I haven’t said anything to him. I don’t want to. I look at him. I ask him something. He isn’t listening. What’s he…Oh wait. Why is he smiling? I didn’t ask anything even remotely funny. 

I’ll be back in a moment, I say. I get up and walk past him. I glance at her from the corner of my eye. Our eyes meet again. Not a hint of acquaintance. Yet, she was smiling...at him.

It wasn’t a coincidence. He was always there! He was always there with me whenever she was around.

God, I want to die.

Photo Credit: Dipu Das / Image

my first DSLR camera - Canon 550D

In fact, this is my very first camera.

Here is the Camera Bag

Front View - without the lens

Top View

Rear View

18-55mm Kit Lens & 50mm Prime Lens

The whole set

So, finally it looks like this

I'm just loving it.

PS: The pictures are not clear for they were taken at night.

imseriouslyjoking.blogspot.com

Wahi Anoop, Wahi Blog, Wahi Bharosa, Sirf Pehchaan Nayi!

MyLifeSuxBigTym.blogspot.com 

ab he

IMSeriouslyJoking.blogspot.com!

I'm not Joking. Seriously. I've been thinking of changing my blog address since so long and I couldn't find anything catchy and memorable. I'm not saying the one which I've kept now is catchy or memorable but it's better than the other. My Life doesn't suck anymore. Why should I stick to that address then?

I'm not sure how many of you will be able to get this blog address through their blog-roll because the link might still be pointing to the old one. That sucks! And I wanted 'IAmSeriouslyJoking' but someone's already using it. Yet I hope you guys like this and can still remember 'IMSeriouslyJoking'.

I will leave my new blog address whenever I leave comments. Please don't mind.

Photo Credit: Chris Greene / Image
Caption Credit: Max Life Insurance

and she never texted again.

 “He was the one I was telling you about the other day.” Sarika says pointing towards me. I was waiting near the counter to pay the bill.

 Prakriti wasn’t listening. She was busy with her phone.

 “…condom? That was him.” Sarika says.

 The word condom broke her reverie.

 “Condom? What condom?” Prakriti says

 “The guy I told you about – he is the one. See that tall thin guy walking out?” Sarika says pointing at me.

 Akash?

 I and Prakriti knew each other through Book Club – an arrangement which let the employees borrow books from other employees. Prakriti had taken a few days’ vacation last week and got delayed in returning my book.

 I had sent a reminder message on her mobile for she wasn’t available at office. She apologized. And that’s how it started. We had started texting each other a lot and I instantly liked her.

 Prakriti was remembering the conversation she had with Sarika a few weeks ago.

 “You know what? I saw one guy buying a condom from our supermarket. I just can’t believe he bought a condom, a condom with so many guys and girls around him. I appreciate his guts.” Sarika said.

 “Really? Who? Oh my god. A lot of things are happening around us.” Prakriti says, clearly surprised. “Some people have fun in a different way. Look around. This place is like a mega-hostel with no warden, no parents, no one at all to control them. This is the best place a ‘couple’ can ask for. Anyway, I want to see that guy.” She winked.

 “But condoms? In front of a lot of people?” Sarika said, disgusted.

 “Okay. I agree. Condom’s a bit too much. Don’t tell me you people haven’t had ‘urges’ when you meet him.” Prakriti teased Sarika.

 Few days before…

 “Thank god no one rang the bell.” He said. Sarika was lying next to him in her bedroom.

 “Bell? Thank god you had a condom with you and my roommate has gone home.” She said.

 “Oh Prakriti has gone home? And the condom, my friend, Akash, bought it for me.”

Photo Credit: Mattox / Image

like moon. beautiful & beyond my reach.

Today, there is no money involved. No friends to persuade. Kavita, she is there, alone, 3 cubicles away. All I need to do is go say ‘Hi’. Still, I can’t. This time I do care. I do care what she would think of me. I do care what she would say, what she would tell her friends. I do care this time. Maybe it’s because of the fear of embarrassment, fear of failure. Or maybe it’s because I liked her.Above all, you need guts.

It was all coming back, like a flash-back – the day I had talked to someone, some stranger. “I will give 3000 rupees to whomever goes and talk to that girl sitting over there.” My manager had said pointing one in a group of girls sitting not more than 5 tables away from ours in the food court.It happened 4 years ago. I went and talked to her. I didn’t even know who that girl was. I didn’t care what she might think or what she might say. All I could think of was the money. I was dead nervous yet I managed to go talk to her. I was pretty sure that chances of seeing her again were very less.

Now, it’s different. I make up my mind one day and drop it the next moment. I feel it’s more like gardens. We plan to tend to them. We just always seem to put it off till next week. And to add to that, there is a common misconception among guys that beautiful girls doesn’t seem to share the enthusiasm of making friends with someone who’s hitting on them.

Kavita, she did look serious for I haven’t seen her smiling. Hope she isn’t arrogant. She is kind of modern by the way she dresses;Hindu for sure by her name; Non-vegetarian anddoesn’t look like a nerd. Being serious, not nerdy and being modern perfectly rules out all the possibilities of her not-being-arrogant. Guess she is single too. If not, well, let’s not talk about that. Mostly they tend to be on phone for a long time. I haven’t seen her oh phone at all, maybe once or twice. I heard she is social and jolly and really cool. I never dared to discuss her among my friends. People tend to be reserved when it comes to matters like this. I’m no different.

I knew I would talk to her one day and I did. Out of the blue! I didn’t give her a chance to talk. I was nervous and she was embarrassed I guess. I don’t expect to see her a lot and I’m sure I will save her some embarrassment if I don’t talk to her in front of her friends.

She wasn’t anything that I thought of. She isn’t serious. She looks gorgeous when she smiles. Maybe that’s the reason she smiles less. She is studious; hard-core vegetarian and die-hard religious. I got 4 wrongs out of 5. I don’t want to risk the last one.

She is like rains in Chennai – when it rains, it pours; when she talks, she’s wonderful. Otherwise, I just don’t exist at all.

Photo Credit: Parvez / Image

embarrassed. a little.

That’s her, walking towards me. Oh God, she is beautiful. I try to look away. No. I can’t. I try to catch her eyes. She doesn't seem to notice me. She can’t miss me. No one’s around. I try to remember our first meet. It was out of the blue. She was surprised. Maybe shocked. I felt lucky in some way when she didn't take it bad. Kind of a dream come true. We did talk later. A couple of times or maybe a little more. 

I look at her. I smile.

She doesn’t.

Thank god, no one's around.

Photo Credit: Cris Watk / Image / Website

Digitizing Books One Word at a Time.

Now that I've written about CAPTCHA (read it here), let me tell you something about reCAPTCHA.

reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books. Millions of CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. reCAPTCHA channels the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into "reading" books.

Using Optical Character Recognition, the photographically scanned book pages are transformed into text. The problem is that OCR is not perfect.

reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. 

Here is the tricky part. If a computer can't read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here’s how: They give two words instead of one – one which cannot be read correctly by OCR and the next word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. 

What if we can read only one of them? Say, something like this.

I enter the word ‘(Humphrey’ correctly but not the next. In this case, it will be still considered correct but it would not take it for granted. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.

Ref: reCAPTCHA / WIKI

CAPTCHA

Pain in the ass!

Yes, that’s the first thing that comes to my mind when I come across a CAPTCHA. Until recently, I was completely against CAPTCHA. Maybe because I found it really difficult to identify the words or letters or numbers.

Have you ever thought why did they even bring this concept? I hadn’t too, until yesterday when my friend gave me a short (but wonderful) lecture on CAPTCHA. I always thought CAPTCHA is a word, similar to ‘WHATCHA’. CAPTCHA is the acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

Consider the ‘Comments’ section on your blog. There are two ‘fields’ there. One is a text box where you can enter your ‘comment’ and another is a ‘Publish’ button. There are only two steps involved in this process. 1. Enter comments in the textbox. 2. Hit ‘Publish’. It’s child’s play for a computer freak to program these. I mean, to open your blog, select ‘comments’ link, enter some text and hit submit. Think of it if he runs this loop a million times? A million comments for your blog. Wow! That’s something good, isn’t it? ;)

Okay. Think if he is doing this on an email registration page. A million user ID’s and passwords with no one actually using it. They can do this with any permutation and combination of alphabets and numbers ranging different lengths. So when you try to create a user id or any user id, all you see is ‘user id already exists’.

CAPTCHAs are designed to be easy for a computer to generate, but difficult for a computer to solve, so that if a correct solution is received, it can be presumed to have been entered by a human. CAPTCHAs have many applications for security which includes – preventing comment spams in blogs, protecting website registrations, online polls, and most importantly, to prevent dictionary attacks*.

So, when an automated program or a ‘bot’ tries to gain access, CAPTCHA GOTCHA!

Ref: CAPTCHA / WIKIPEDIA 

*CAPTCHAs can also be used to prevent dictionary attacks in password systems. The idea is simple: prevent a computer from being able to iterate through the entire space of passwords by requiring it to solve a CAPTCHA after a certain number of unsuccessful logins.

PS: I found the topic interesting. Thought I will write about it here. Hope its informative.

i'm anything but miser.

To quote Google,

mi·ser/ˈmīzər/

Noun: A person who hoards wealth and spends as little money as possible.

I wear a Tissot. I use a Samsung Galaxy S3. I have 2 Apple iPods - one Touch & one Classic. One Bang & Olufsen earphones (and many other stuffs). I bought all these with my money. I'm not boasting about myself. I've always been extravagant and will always be. Though I'm not taking any credit for that.

I rarely think about money when I want to buy something for myself or my family. I do think when I'm spending money for someone else. It's my money and I've the right to think and will continue to do so. I've never stopped spending money for them though not in the same way I spend for myself. Even so, how can that be counted for a miser? 

I'm not spending money for them the way I spend for myself and so I'm a miser? What the heck? I didn't stop spending money or I'm not saving money in any bank account or anywhere else for that matter.

Does that make me a miser? I mean, really?

Photo Credit: Shilpin Patel / Image

Line Of Vision by David Ellis - Review

I have been reading a lot of books lately. And I just finished the book - Line of Vision by David Ellis. I thought I will soon write something about this book before I forget the details. After all I've been (wanting &) waiting for something to write on my blog.

Whenever I hear 'Legal Thrillers', I always thought of John Grisham and I never liked him. I've read a couple of books of his and hated both. So, I never wanted to read Legal Thrillers anymore. And then I started watching an English Series - Boston Legal. Its a courtroom dracomedy - combination of drama and comedy. And that's how I got back to legal thrillers, Non-Grisham books though ;)

So, Line of Vision!

Seriously guys, no words to explain. Its just wonderful and I didn't want to keep this book down until I finished it. The protagonist, Marty, is accused of murdering his lover's husband. Paul, who is Marty's lawyer, does a wonderful job in saving Marty's ass. I was so convinced that Marty will be executed but till the last chapter. Oh My God! I actually felt I was in that courtroom. 

There are sequences (very small though) in the novel where I felt a little disconnected - not disconnected actually, but I had no idea about why is he doing a few things. But those few things are really important when it comes to the end. I mean, you will feel no gaps once you finish the book. David Ellis has done a wonderful job and I'm planning to read more of his.

I will give 4/5.

PS: No offense meant to Grisham fans. Its just that I don't like his books. Also, I'm sure this review doesn't look like an actual 'Review'. I hope it conveys the message though.

every year. like clockwork.

So I’m back again. It’s been one year since I wrote anything at all. I haven’t even opened my blog for so long. Anyway, it’s my birthday again.

Another year closer to death.

I’ve been thinking a lot these days about scribbling something here. I never got anything or any topic to write about. I once asked my friend to suggest some topic to write about and she told me to write about Girl-Friends. I don’t know what she meant by just saying Girl-Friend, like, my girl-friend or girl-friends in general. Its way out of my league anyway. Also I don’t want to be reminded of things that I’m learning to forget.

I'm in Hyderabad now. It's a nice place. I always thought ‘Hyderabad? Oh My God! It’s hot there.’ But no. It’s not so hot except for summer. Singapore township is a wonderful place to stay for those who are working in Infosys. ;) But there is no place like home or home town. I can’t wait to go back to Cochin.

I’m not sure what to do next. I mean, in life. After watching Saina Nehwal winning Bronze and Kashyap’s losing in Quarter Finals, I wanted to go into Badminton. I mean I’m not a wonderful player. But I just love the game. After watching Boston Legal, I wanted to become a lawyer. After listening to Buddha Bar’s Secret love, I wanted to become a violinist. I have no idea what would become of my life. My roomies, only-2-year-experienced-and-yet-fucked-up-software-engineers, planning to go for MBA. They are tired of IT. Think of me guys. I’ve been into IT for as long as I can remember. I can’t even write with a pen properly now.

Hope something good will turn out of this, out of my life I mean.

Happy Birthday to Myself by the way.

Photo Credit: Guido Ric / Image
Photo Credit: Mokra / Image