Stagnation is one thing I always fight in my life. I like the feeling of freshness and newness. Even if it means re-installing the OS on my comp for the n+1 th time But OS apart, I just upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.1. Lots of new features – one of them being the ability to import from old Blogger accounts. And yes, I imported all my posts from my first blog – All You Touch And All You See…

You can browse the Archives of this blog and read how I sounded couple of years ago. I miss the freshness of then

Talking of new, DigiComp replaced my motherboard with a new upgraded board. I have had the MSI K8N Neo4-F motherboard for more than a year now and it has given me more problems than I have patience for. When it died on me this time, I decided to just ditch AMD and go for a new Core2Duo (although the cost meant I would be staring at a bottomless pocket for months to come). Maybe God took mercy on me or maybe my smart idea of contacting the service guys myself (instead of the ass of a comp dealer that I have been going thro) worked, nevertheless the new Platinum version of the K8N Neo4-F is working like a charm and I am all happy

Did a bike trip to Mysore last weekend and that was a first in my life – my first real long distance bike trip. Nothing to brag about, but I am glad I did it. The photography experience was very rewarding as you can see on my Photo Blog.  I am currently looking to revamping my entie website and install a new gallery. I have to take my photography to the next level…Yes, this has been pending for long and I am running out of excuses….

List is here: http://www.icrpc.org/icrpc.org.beware.htm

Myself, or someone I know, have all had bad experiences with (and they are all in the above list):

1. ICICI
2. Tata Indicom
3. Digicomp, Bangalore (sadly the only service center for many computer companies like MSI, Asus…) These guys really suck  My recent transactions with them have all been very smooth. So I give them a thumbs up
4. Viewsonic Service, Bangalore.
5. MSI India (I’ve had zillion problems with their motherboard and have had it serviced thrice. I finally contacted their Area Sales Manager Mr Vishwanath who told me to email him with his problems. I did so and that guy never even bothered to reply to my mail. Now my motherboard is dead again. What do I do with such unresponsive people?).

While I am at it, let me tell you the people with whom I, or someone I know, have had good transactions with:

1. Canon Care India (read story here)
2. Hutch (never had a problem with them here in Bangalore)
3. HDFC Bank (been dealing with them for 3 years now. I am also a heavy credit card user. Never had a problem).
4. Spicejet (flown four times with them and all pleasant trips). Recently I flew Indigo and I liked their service too. They were actually selling foodstuff inflight at M.R.P!!
5. LowePro. I know they are not an Indian company, but when I had problems with the Orion AW camera backpack, I wrote to the Product Specialist in the States and he contacted their Indian liaison office and got me a replacement. Now that is what I called customer service!
6. Amazon (again not an Indian company but I’ve had very good dealings with them).
7. Redington India – the guys who service Motorola phones. Many may not agree with me on this, but I have never had problems with them
8. Samsung service
9. Acer service, Bangalore

Sometimes I wish it would all go away

Sometimes I wish more would come my way

But at all times there is a stain somewhere

And I wonder how long you'll remain

A virgin, pure and undefending

But it keeps ringing

My ears, they cause imbalance

Is that the sun setting or the earth rising

I cannot say. I don't want to stay. I don't want you stained.  

I got myself a pro account last night. Partly due to frustration, partly in haste. According to my quick arithmetic:

The webspace on my site is only 60mb. But I pay $3/pm on a quarterly basis and I don't need more than 60mb unless I plan to upload lot of snaps. If I go for an upgrade, I need to shell out at least $9/pm for up to 1 gig and bandwidth restrictions. Now 1 gig is a LOT of web space, but according  to my estimations, most of the images in my galleries (the older ones) are just sitting there. I don't think they have too many hits. Now why should I be paying $9 just to 'store' images that really don't do much?

Enter Flickr. I get unlimited uploads and bandwidth. I don't have to code anything. It's got some nifty tools too. Only thing I don't like is the layout. So I am hoping to use Flickr as my primary image storage space, and maintain albums on my website by using Simpleviewer for display. I stumbled upon Flickrviewer which seems to be the way to go to achieve this. Need to investigate further to see if this is the right tool for the job. Nevertheless, at $24.95/yr, Flickr Pro is a cheaper proposition than buying more webspace. But I have to learn to live with the lousy interface of Flickr. 

Update: There are a lot of plugins that help integrate WP and Flickr. Unfortunately, I just realized that Flickr is blocked in most offices here in Bangalore. And almost everyone I know use the net at their workplaces for general browsing. Not a good thing. 

Update 2: The discussion happening here is exactly what I am cribbing about Flickr too. 

I returned from my Himachal/Delhi trip on Monday night after a very delayed take off from Delhi. The weather was quite bad and I don’t think we could hold the airlines staff responsible for the delay. Even at 1 pm, anything beyond 100 mtrs was barely visible!

I have been totally disoriented for most of yesterday and today. The shallowness of office life is hitting me now and I feel an urgent need to escape from it. After having spent 10 days in the ‘real’ world I am back to corporate hypocrisy, faking deadlines, listening to managers with byte-sized IQs et-al. Of course, I could keep myself busy, but his 9-5 behind-glued-to-chair thingy is keeping me from the many things I have to do (like process 5 gigs of RAW files).

I am actually a tad bit disappointed because the snaps did not come as good as I expected. Let me say that again – the snaps are not up to the mark as per my expectations. I was hoping to do some Ansel Adams kinda magic but the cold and having to move along with the rest of the trekking group did not allow me to do quality photography. However my gear withstood the elements, and everything from the bag that I got stitched for my new tripod to my LowePro AW Orion Trekker came in handy during the rain and snow. That is something worthy of mention because when you have gear worth your life’s savings and are trekking in a jungle which can kill you with just the cold, you gotta have piece of mind. The only let down were those SterlingTek batteries. They did not last even as long as the regular Canon one. They are supposed to last longer because they are of higher capacity. I think I got duds. In any case this trip has been a good practice ground for a Leh trip which I am eager to do sometime next year. And this time I will not go with YHAI. With all due respect to the very capable field officers and camp leaders, I have certain hygiene standards which I’d like to maintain always and that was very difficult when there were 50 other people crammed in confined spaces. Sorry, even National Integration is not a good excuse for such overcrowding. I think I’ve seen enough of this in our unreserved compartments (read, bad loos). However the good part that came out of all this is the fact that I survived -1°C and learnt a few important things about warm clothing and backpacking.

Apart from the trek itself, the 2 days in Dharamshala and 3 days in Delhi were a blast. We were unprepared for that part of the trip too – we weren’t carrying extra empty bags! Both these places are shopping havens and I now miss not having shopped more Dharamshala is also a great place for street photography and this brings me to another crib – overhead wires criss-crossing all over the towns, country sides, jungles, highways…. These darn wires make the nicest of scenes ugly

Anyways, got to get back to work now. Hoping to complete processing the snaps and writing the catalogue by the end of this week.

Climbing to Kalatop. First signs of snowfall