Gaurav's Blog

This can usually be found on Twitter.

Well, that's over. I bought myself a camera, watched No Country for Old Men at the cinema, and had a really awesome, juicy dinner; a nice, long walk; a long bus-ride; a cab ride, and then had a chance to play around with my brand new camera! My punctuation's gone to bits, so I'm sorry; and thanks to everybody who wrote nice things on my wall - I'll reply to them all individually this weekend!

There's so much more to record before I finish but, alas, my brain is deadness itself, and so I must I must I must go now. Take care everybody, and have an awesome year ahead!

Labels: birthday, camera, feb29, olympus

This post was posted by Unknown at 3:05 am | 4 comments | Post a Comment

Since I needs must write a blog post (because of the twin pressures of request and competition, as also a certain need to express myself in writing; that I am waiting for an e-mail of much importance also contributes to this need certainly), but ...

Good heavens.

I have to write. This is a need. I need to write, I feel it within me. I want to write, writing can be fun. But I also must write; I've been told to, and both my blog-friends are going at it, so I would feel both left out and a disappointment if I didn't. So here goes.

(Ah, much better. Go on.)

Oh my, the GRE draws near! It's going to (hopefully) be crazy for a while to come. My birthday comes too, this Friday - once in four years, but what can you do? I've also maybe got to perhaps starting thinking about well my err driving lessons, actually, although there's a good chance that's going to be pushed into the future. I might also be buying the camera-of-my-dreams next month perhaps maybe depending. My cousin brother is to be married at the end of April, if all goes according to plan etc. I had a rather strange dream last night; I can't be sure, but I think Michael Caine (sorry, Sir Mich. Cai.) wanted to beat me up. Nfznu was there, too, as a sort of narrator/guide type person thing, although I notice not doing much to stave off Sir Michael. Still, strange non-depressing dreams are probably the best, so I'm not complaining.

I deliberately (and quite cunningly, I should think!) did very little over the weekend, besides lying around and watching television and the occasional DVD (I saw I Not Stupid, which was a lot better than I expected! The first 30-50% was typical Singaporean farce/satire, but somewhere along the line it picked up heart and went with it, and you ended up feeling for the characters, which was nice). What this means is that I will have to do a lot more work after-hours on all matter of financial, emotional, economical, programmable and game-related madness. Oh, and the laundry, of course. There's always the dratted laundry.

Oh, quick additional: I spent last afternoon playing around with Adobe Lightroom, and had tons of fun with it. I put some of the processed photos online, so let me know what you think.

Goodbye, fair blog reader; fair blog reader, good bye.

Labels: adobe, birthday, blogs, camera, gradschool, laundry

This post was posted by Unknown at 12:29 am | 2 comments | Post a Comment

So I've been up late listening to the special 'Big Link Up' edition of BBC World Have Your Say on the BBC World Service, who celebrate 75 years of broadcasting today (December 19th) - happy birthday, BBC World Service! - and also have a spiffy new website; nice and clean, although I don't know if the interactivity is worth it. I'm wondering whether to recommend that they - or atleast, WHYS - go through the (supposed?) pain of setting up Slash, just so we can get threads and conversations and so on just like this (heh, you thought I wouldn't mention Perl's birthday two days ago? 'e don't know me very well, do he?)

So, umm, yeah. On that note there's somebody birthday I "forgot", except I didn't really forget and it's a long story so yeah. Feel free to complain in person, or wait a while, and it'll all be made up and all. I smashed a bottle today - glass! Glass! The horror. Had to sweep it up and all. Did I mention we don't have a dustpan? Nasty.

Am supposed to be in tomorrow, or rather, I can skip (it's Bakri Id/Hari Raya Haji) but would prefer not to. But obviously I'm not going in in the morning. Had a pretty decent game of Civ4: I started my last game again, but quit it because I'd made some stupid strategic mistakes earlier (mainly: attacked too early). So I started over. Now, my Civ's in much better shape, I think; it's hard to tell, because if either of two huge empires who are currently very friendly towards me suddenly decide to take me down, I've had it. A lot of my money's in the ground, and I can't really finance a war. It really is very Roman, though: hodge-podge of foreign colonies captured from someone else, ruled by one or two purpose-built Roman cities, while the "homelands" are vast open spaces, beautiful cities, Rome herself (3 wonders, I think!) in one corner but very much the centre of it all. And now, as 1400 AD creeps up, I have given up my dictatorship to be King of the Romans! Now, if only I can fill up the uneven areas of my emp... err, kingdom, reform my economy (I'm back up to 40% research taxation, and have lots of ignored techs to work on!) and develop my countryside (particularly in the "colonies" ... I'd prefer to leave the homelands pristine and clear for the enjoyment of true Roman citizens), and avoid not getting swallowed up for fifty years or so, then I could consider declaring war on the Aztecs and finishing them off, giving me - I hope! - a land advantage over the Americans and Germans. Unless they make it to other land masses, I guess. And I better be careful not to let me guard down: both the American and Germans probably feel entitled to my Russian conquests, and to say nothing of the Roman homelands ... let's see, let's see. Lots to think about!

I've spent large portions of last week finding new photographers I like, and especially new favourite photos. I hope I didn't creep anybody up by sneaking up on family photos from the Everybody's Photo list! I'm going to stop for a while, 'cos I'm scared Flickr will think I'm creepy, but hopefully will start again soon in a while. There are so many undiscovered gems lying around (and discovered gems I haven't discovered alsos). And yes, Flickr Stats is just as addictive as I thought it would be.

That might actually be all for once. Several links and other detritus remain unposted, but, hey - do I look like I care? They're time will come, and my Mac has space enough for a large inbox, should it come to that.

Then, friends, 'til break of day - I'll away, I'll away! Goodnight, all.

Labels: bbc world service, birthday, civilization iv, flickr, late night, photos, radio, world have your say

This post was posted by Unknown at 4:26 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

As usual, I have two birthdays this year. It's actually a whole lot better having two birthdays, actually: it gives you plently of time to just push back and have fun, lets you have two birthday breakfasts/lunches/dinners, confuses everybody (I've had atleast two "err ... should I wish you today or tomorrow?"s), and gives you the chance to have fun, take a breather - then get right back to having fun again! And that's not counting the usual random SMSs from all over, phone calls from friends far away, and all the other birthday hoo-ha. And of course, tomorrow is Gerard's birthday, and he certainly has stuff to celebrate; so hopefully that'll be fun too.

Since last post: we did go out for dinner, pretty much the whole lab; ate at Long John Silvers at VivoCity. Then the others went on for some more food (I think?), while I slipped off to Page One, a pretty nice bookstore. Looked through the music, but didn't find anything interesting (which means I'll probably blow money on Magnatune tomorrow!) Was just wondering around when I chanced upon my current favouritest book of all time, so bought that up. Then found The Shadow of the Wind, which I thought my sister would like, so bought that for her. Then I decided - heck - I was going to buy it sometime - and bought a very pretty hardbound "Complete Works of Shakespeare" thingie. Very cool!

Met up with friends again; we went to Ben 'n Jerry's for ice cream, then to Harry's for drinks. I'll slip in at this point that circumstantial similarities to previous engagements at Harry's did occur, but I feel I dealt with it a little better this time around. In short, where last time I stayed until the music ended, this time I left as soon as the music began to play. There's some music it just isn't fun to listen to alone, but why should you? Just get up and leave. I did.

Took the bus back home, then played a little bit of Medieval II: Total War by myself (defeated the Portuguese, after having defeated the Spanish yesterday; this gives me two other minor powers to my name, and also control over the entire Iberian peninsula), then multiplayer with Omar (he beat me silly), then multiplayer with Gerard (he beat me silly; like, death and blood and bones and so on). Then - as if I hadn't had enough fun in one day - watched the last half or so of The Tailor of Panama, a book I had a lot of fun reading. So yay!

As if all of this warn't enough, Xkcd has a new shirt I'm going to pre-order, and my uncomprehensiblicosuperpoweremessomessesalmokindsortasemialgorithm to read Nexus files just might have finally been tweaked all the way, so it both (a) works, and (b) implements pushBack(). What that means - if you can't read my mind, etc. - is that three-odd days of work might finally have come to a head, allowing me - finally! - to move on to more interesting avenues and better prospects. Yay!

Labels: birthday, books, today

This post was posted by Unknown at 4:08 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Thus far: spectacular space photograph (and yesterday's ain't so bad, neither!), a phone call from Janani, and dinner out (in a half hour or so) with lab mates. Not too bad a start to a couple of days of fun!

I'd like to buy some Magnatune music to celebrate, but can't find anything good enough ... atleast, not yet!

Labels: birthday

This post was posted by Unknown at 5:25 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment