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Trainmen, originally uploaded by Rakesh Ashok.

Shot at Central Railway Station long time ago in the morning, when I had gone to meet my friend before she left for bangalore. This one again was shot using my Nikon FM10 with the ever sharp 50mm f/1.8.

Labels: Chennai, Photography

Well this time it's my all time favourite heroine's movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. This is one of my favourite movie as well. In this movie Audrey Hepburn plays a beautiful young socialite in New York who has a cat with no name. This movie won the best song Oscar for the song Moon River performed by Audrey Hepburn herself and music by Henry Mancini and Lyrics by Johnny Mercer. It also won an Oscar for Henry Mancini's background score. I have seen this movie more than ten times and yet I'm unable to keep myself staring at the sweet, naughty & charming beauty of Holly Golightly. I recently bought a poster of Audrey Hepburn. The poster is a photo from from this movie where she is sitting in a restaurant smoking with a huge a cigarette holder wearing a black dress, which is an iconic picture.

Labels: Movie Poster, Movies

In an age where people using Internet Explorer are looked upon as nuts & Firefox users are worshiped. Why in the heaven's sake does Vodafone India still prefer Internet Explorer. Please change the goddamn website so that it works in Firefox and other browsers. Because using Internet Explorer is too Taboo these days. And restricting users to a particular browser is a just bullshit. If the person or personnel responsible for the website do know anything about usability or have heard of other browsers other than Internet Explorer, then please change the goddamn site.

With Regards,
Martian

Labels: General

Well most of you who own an E-series phone would love this latest news from the folks at Quickoffice. The latest version of Quickoffice i.e. Quickoffice 6 is being offered as a free update. To download this update just go Quickmanager section of your Quickoffice app. Its just a 3.6MB download. Its awesome. I have already downloaded it and it just works great on my Nokia E51. This upgrade is being offered to almost all the Nokia E series devices, including the E51, E52, E55, E63, E71, E72, E75 and E90.

Labels: Mobile, Software

Well a new season a new intro. That's always been the case with anime. This time the intro song for the 10th season of bleach is by a band called Scandal. The song is called Shoujo S. For more info about the band read my previous post about The Most Powerful Japanese Girls Band. Once again its a great song :)

Scandal - Shoujo S (Anime version)

Scandal - Shoujo S (Original)

Labels: Anime

One of the best science fiction movies of the 80's. This movie was released in 1982. Written and directed by Steven Lisberger. This movie was released well before I was born. Also at a time when computer usage was in the rise. The concept is really interesting. It features in many people's favourite science fiction movies. In mine too :) I will post more movie posters from here onwards. One day when I have my own house I'm going to fill it up with movies posters.

Labels: Movie Poster, Movies

SCANDAL "The Most Powerful Japanese Girls Band", originally uploaded by g2slp.

Well its been a long time since I actually updated my blog with anything other than my photos and their descriptions, blah blah etc. So here is a music band I recently fell in love with. Well the title may mislead many, it was unintentional though :D

The four girls are from a Japanese band called Scandal. All four girls hail from Osaka, Japan. The four girls are Haruna Ono, Tomomi Ogawa, Mami Sasazaki, and Rina Suzuki. I heard them first when one of their recent song was chosen as the title song of Bleach. Its a damn good number with a mix of J-Pop and some heavy rock :). I have so far heard three of their songs. And all of them are pretty good. The best thing about the songs are that they have a catchy tune too. But apparently my taste is a little weird according to my colleagues who consider the songs I listen to as nothing more than NOISE. Too bad for them. They really are missing out on so much good music out there. I pity them ;). I wish I knew Japanese :D

Check out their videos at Youtube.
Scandal - Shojo S
Scandal - Shojo S (Anime Version)
Scandal - Space Ranger
Scandal - Koi moyou

Official Website : http://www.scandal-4.com/

Labels: Music

Citizen Again, originally uploaded by Rakesh Ashok.

This is my fifth watch. The first & second were given to me by my dad. Both of them got repaired. The third one was presented to me by my friends which is in my shelf :). The fourth I bought after I got a job also got screwed up. For a long time I was roaming around without a watch. Using my trusty mobile as a watch. This is really a great watch. Its automatic meaning there is no battery. It moves by your physical movement. It did cost me a lot but then I don't buy a watch every other day do I...?

One more thing one can also see the inner working of the watch through the see thru glass behind the dial. Its pretty awesome. Check out the other photo of this watch.:)

Labels: Photography, Photoshop

Lightning in Chennai, originally uploaded by Rakesh Ashok.

Well photographing lightning ain't that easy, which I learnt after taking some 50 shots of the open sky and capturing only a few (three) shots having a streak of lighting in them. And this is the best picture in that lot. The setup is kinda simple. You simply can't do this with point and shoot unless you are extremely lucky.

Here are the basic instructions for photographing lightning which I followed.

1. Set the ISO to something like 200
2. Set the f stop to somewhere around 11-16
3. The exposure should be somewhere in seconds if you wanna capture it hand held. If you have a tripod you can set the exposure in minutes which will ensure some really great shots.
4. As for white balance set it to auto or you can try experimenting with it.
5. Choice of the lens absolutely depends on the surroundings. Most preferably use wide or normal lenses.
6. And ya make sure you cover up most of the camera with some plastic bag or else you can forget your gear :D

Thats about it. I didn't have a tripod so I used a 4 sec exposure to capture this. :) Now that the monsoons are very near I hope to see some more people showing off their pictures of Lightning in Chennai :)

Labels: Chennai, Photography, Photoshop