Redline: Film snapshot

Don’t watch this film for smart lines, good dialogue and character… You will not find the acting par excellence, stereotypes are galore, and female objectification is at its peak… Just watch it for the cars! It’s has the best cars in the worst movie 😉

The film features a: Phantom Rolls Royce, Lamborghini Murcielago, Enzo Ferrari, Ferrari F430, Ferrari Scaglietti and two Mercedes SLR McLaren AMGs. A $450,000 Porsche Carrera GT is actually crashed during one sequence. Eddie Griffin accidentally crashed and destroyed the Enzo Ferrari, one of only 400 ever produced. [Source]

The lines at the start and the end of the movie were catchy:

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[first lines]
There are cars that get you from point A to point B. And then there are cars that get you from point A to point B really fast. Fast cars cost big money, and with millions of dollars at stake, there are people who’ll do anything to win. People who take risks and never play it safe.

[last lines]
Good cars can get you from point A to point B. And great cars? Well, they’ll just get you into trouble.

Merci Flower

At times in our search for the grandiose in the sky, we miss out on simplicity at our feet.

Merci Flower

This is the case of this tiny flower. While I busied myself taking pics of the Reis Magos fort, Merci spotted this flower and rooted herself there till she got my attention.

I can vouch that this was the best picture I took that day.

The other side of Panjim

Sometimes the world looks beautiful when you look at it from a new perspective.

Drove down the road on the other side of the Mandovi river with an intention to visit the Reis Magos fort there. And when I looked to the left there was the expanse of the Mandovi opening out into the sea.

The other side of Panjim

[Click on the image for a better view]

This panorama is the outcome of 9 images stitched together. From Left to right you can see: A floating casino, the housing complex atop Betim, the dome of the legilative assembly of Goa, some more casinos, the Mandovi bridge, the Patto bridge, and finally the capital city of Goa on the other bank.

Received a few questions about how this image was captured and so I thought I would add a note to that:

1. Firstly, the individual images are clicked without a tripod! It was a just a casual drive in the evening when I saw the expanse of the river and knew i had to stop right there! Using a tripod though makes things much easier as you will shortly realise

2. The camera used was my trusty Sony H50. (You can use any digital camera to get panoramas like this!)

3. Care should be taken while taking the individual pics. What I usually do is pan the cam first without clicking using my palm as a pivot. I then take individual frames keeping 30% of overlap between the previous and the next. All these should be done in manual mode else the there will be unwanted compensation and other in camera effects that affect the stitching.

4. I then transfer the snaps to the comp. Using a program called PTGui gives me the most flexible stitch.

5. Final post-processing and cropping in Photoshop CS2 and bingo! you have your pano ready!

So get out there with your digi cam and take a few panos and let me know!

Does a Zoo complete a Sanctuary?

“Hey! Why dont you put up the pics of the Bondla zoo as a sequel to your trip to Bondla? It kind of completes the Bondla experience.”

This suggestion from Elton led me to muse… Does a zoo really ‘complete’ a sanctuary? This is not what Elton intended to say, but just a thought that lingered in my mind. There was Ayesha who completely disapproved of going to the zoo when I visited Bondla the first time. Merci was more than convinced that the animals in their cages/pens looked depressing… similar to being  in solitary confinement for animals which are otherwise quite social.

Bondla does boast of quite a collection of animals. In the monsoons their surroundings looked green and prosperous, but I wondered how it would be in the summer when there were not many watering holes around and only dry vegetation to chew on…

Stately... Majestic... Limited to a cage

Watch this

Crocodile couch

This turtle shared the same pond as the croc!

Jawsssss

The Gaze of the cobra

The Head Bison

Bison Bonds

Graze a little...

It was time for us to leave the confines of the zoo and go out into the wild…

Deer in the wild

Wild cat? 😉

Mega mushroom

No added colors 😉

Locust on the car bonnet

Colorful cricket

Butterfly time!

Dad called this 'the sugary one'

Leopard skin butterfly

So… does a zoo complete your experience in a sanctuary…? It does not for me. But I guess when animals are injured or in transit, or rescued, they need a safe house and this would serve as one. Correct me if I am wrong.

Over the Hedge – Get over it!

I am an animation fan! This is third animation movie I watched in the recent past and I’m more than convinced that there is much more in these movies than what meets the eye.

In this one it was the parody on modern consumeristic behavior… to get all you want, rather than what you need.

It happens in the scene where RJ, the urban raccoon, describes the eating habits of humans to his new-found rustic friends:

RJ: [showing the other animals around the houses] They always got food with them. We eat to live – these guys live to eat! Let me show you what I’m talking about!
[as he speaks he shows the other animals what humans do] The human mouth is called a ‘piehole’, the human being is called a ‘couch potato’.
[signifies telephone] That is a device to summon food.
[signifies doorbell] That is one of the many voices of food.
[signifies front door] That is the portal for the passing of food.
[signifies delivery truck] That is one of the many food transportation vehicles. Humans bring the food, take the food, ship the food, they drive food, they wear the food!
[signifies microwave] That gets the food hot!
[signifies refrigerator] That keeps the food cold!
[signifies turtle pinata] That… I’m not sure what that is.
[kids break the turtle piñata and Verne yells] Well, what do you know? FOOD!
[signifies table where family prays before dinner] That is the altar where they WORSHIP food!
[signifies advert for antacid] That’s what they eat when they’ve eaten TOO MUCH food!
[signifies treadmill] That gets rid of the guilt so they can eat MORE FOOD! FOOD! FOOD! FOOD! FOOD! FOOOOOD! So, you think they have enough?
[everybody nods] Well, they don’t. For humans, enough is *never* enough! And what do they do with the stuff they don’t eat? They put it in gleaming silver cans, just for us!
[opens the thrash cans and knocks them over] Dig in!

[The entire film review can be found here at IMDB]

Milk – A Snapshot

Without hope, life’s not worth living.
– Harvey Milk (From the film Milk)

The story of Harvey Milk is one about HOPE. I was moved by the words at the end of the film:

“I ask this… If there should be an assassination, I would hope that five, ten, one hundred, a thousand would rise. I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out – – If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door… And that’s all. I ask for the movement to continue. Because it’s not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power… it’s about the “us’s” out there. Not only gays, but the Blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us’s. Without hope, the us’s give up – I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. So you, and you, and you… You gotta give em’ hope… you gotta give em’ hope.”

Real – Unreal: Kala Academy

The real is but a dream…

A few moments in the evening spent at the Kala Academy, Goa’s premier centre for the performing arts. A couple of friends were down from Mumbai, to meet Juliana De Sa — a reputed teacher in the field of western classical singing. We got down to the topic of how singing and music has taken a backburner in a world of cut throat competition. And yet there are still individuals who relentlessly pursue that dream against all odds. Joanne Marie DeMello happens to be one such person that Goa is proud of.

What is this life if full of care...?

We wandered around the lobby of Kala Academy and the blend of reality and illusion caught my eye. I was lucky to be carrying my digicam and decided to go for a few panoramas. It’s up to you to decide what is real and what is not.

A piece of sky

Through the looking glass

... we have no time to stand and stare

"Elementary, my dear Watson"

Night and Day

[For those looking for the homepage of the Kala Academy]

Better Batteries

That's an investment!

Everyone around me seems to be buying a new laptop these days. I bought a new battery instead 😀

For months now I saw the steady decline in backup time the current battery gave me, until one day died. This left me with a decision and a prospect of burning a hole in my pocket again.  And so I bought the new battery (for your information: an original ACER laptop battery costs Rs 800 more in Goa than in Mumbai)

The next I wanted to know was how to increase the life span of the battery…  I looked up the net and found equally confusing views.

Opinion 1: There are fixed number of charge cycles for a battery, after which its performance declines.
Opinion 2:  Do not wait for a battery to discharge completely to charge it again.
Opinion 3: Do not worry about leaving a battery connected to AC power continuously.  There is a chip to disconnect the battery from the mains once it is completely charged.

On a lighter vein, I knew of someone who physically takes off the battery once it is charged and uses only AC power. However, if the power fails suddenly… pop goes the BIOS and the document you are working on!

I wanted an answer.  After following a few google search pages and a few twitter updates… this is these best resource i came up with: Laptop battery maintenance and Battery University

If not a new laptop, at least I can boast about a new laptop battery!

Ice Age 2: The Meltdown

I guess I am addicted! To animation films… I watched Madagascar 2 and now I needed another fix! So I chose to watch the sequel of Ice Age and could not stop myself laughing at the ready wit of Sid, Diego and Manfred at every turn of the film. What pepped me up was their attitude. There’s a meltdown happening, but for our friends, ‘When the going gets tough, the great party!!!’

A sample of the funnies that spice up the movie:

Sid: Maybe we could rapidly evolve into water creatures.
Diego: That’s genius, Sid.
Sid: Call me Squid.

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Sid: Look, I opened my camp! “Campo del Sid”. It means Camp of Sid.
Diego: Congratulations. You’re now an idiot in *two* languages.
Sid: Shh! Not in front of the K-I-D-Z. These little guys love me. Right, Billy?
Glypto Boy Billy: Don’t make me eat you.
Sid: Ah, they kid. That’s why they’re called “kids”!

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Got myself to watch an animation after months! There is a certain quality of animation movies that can move me more than any other genre of films. In this film, it was this dialogue that did the trick!

Alex (the lion) to Marty (the zebra):

You’ve been a great friend. You’ve helped me so often to see the bright side of my problems that i never think of you as having any. I wasn’t there for you when you needed me. What kind of friend does that make me? Pretty lousy friend I guess… well I just wanted you to know that you’re one in a million.