Some more pics of Nagarjuna Sagar

Unfortunately, we started very late in the afternoon from the city and hence did not go till the dam. We just went till very outskirts of Sagar and returned back. Actually we all wanted a long drive and we had a fantastic drive, so not really complaining.

Speeding towards nature's lap

Sony DSC-H5, Shutter Speed - 1/15, Aperture - Auto

Last weekend, I went visiting Nagarjunasagar with my family. It was absolutely fantastic experience. I have been to Sagar several times before, but the experience is always exhilarating. I tried capturing the speed of drive in the picture, and this drove my mom crazy. She even threatened to get down and take a bus back. Obviously driving with one hand at 130kmph and shooting pictures on a single lane was not her choicest way of having fun.

Some E71 Shortcuts

Here are some of the most useful shortcuts on the E71. Some of the shortcuts from E61 have been changed or have become verbose due to the change in keyboard layout. I still think Nokia should give us a key re-mapping tool for the QWERTY keyboard.

Toggling Bluetooth
Press and hold '*' key

Toggling between General and Silent profiles
Press and hold '#' key

List of applications running (something like a Task Manager)
Press and hold 'Home' key

Kill a process
Press and hold 'Home' key to get a list of running apps
Select the app with up or down of D-Pad
Press backspace to kill the process

Mark a single item
Shift + center D-Pad

Mark multiple items
Shift + up or down on D-Pad

Copy to clipboard
Ctrl + C (E61 and E61i)
E71 Option 1: Press Fn and release, Press Ctrl and release, Press C
E71 Option 2: Press and hold Shift key, left soft key becomes 'Copy', press it to copy

Paste from clipboard
Ctrl + V (E61 and E61i)
E71 Option 1: Press Fn and release, Press Ctrl and release, Press V
E71 Option 2: Press and hold Shift key, right soft key becomes 'Paste', press it to paste

Launch browser from standby screen
Press and hold '0'

Bring up Input Options Menu
Press and hold 'Fn' and press 'Space'

Browser Shortcuts (Do not press 'Fn' key)

0 - home page
1 - bookmarks
2 - find text
3 - previous page
8 - page overview
9 - enter web address
* - increase zoom
# - decrease zoom

Camera Shortcuts
T - Autofocus
Center D-Pad - take a picture

Hard Reset of the phone (Backup your phone before doing this)
Type in *#7370# at the standby screen. It will ask for a lock code, default lock code is 12345

One-sixth Sense

Really good article Chidanand Rajghatta. The author succintly touches upon our need to buildup a media frenzy over even the smallest of reasons.

Water is precious

Water is precious.
Save it. Save Mother Earth. Lets leave a blue planet to the coming generations.

Blocking and blotting our skyline

David Ogilvy, considered father of advertising, in autobiography said "I have a passion for landscape, and I have never seen one improved by a billboard. Where every prospect pleases, man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard."

President Eisenhower declared, "I am against these billboards that mar our scenery, but I don't know what I can do about it."

Advertisers continue to block our skyline with ever increasing number of hoarding virtually blocking all the beautiful azure sky with beautiful white cotton clouds flitting across, in the day. In the night we have the garish display of ads with bright lights and flashing neons, which effectively blot out any stars in the sky. The pollution compounds this problem and "starry sky" is something of elusive concept for most the kids. We don't see any stars except for the brightest of them that too on a lucky night.

This provoked me to take the following pictures of both the beautiful sky (for most of which I had to go out of the city or find specific spots like the tankbund) and also the hoardings blocking the beauty.

I will keep posting to add more pictures of the city skyline blocked by hoardings as a series.

Now for some beautiful unblocked, unspoilt skyline visible only from some specific places in the city or by traveling away from the city.

Makes me wonder, what kind of world are we leaving for our children?

My Sony DSC-H5 - Perpetual Love Hate

I hate it, I love it, I hate it, I love it.......the fight goes on.

I bought by Sony DSC-H5 an year and half back assuming I will never grow out of semi-SLR for all my photographic needs. Here I am today cribbing about what my faithful camera cannot do.

I love my camera for several amazing shots I have captured in the past one year. An easy camera to get started with and offers good usability for a newbie like me. But for the past couple of weeks I have been spending more time on photography again and experimenting with things I did not dare to do before like shooting with the shutter speed mode at 1/1000 of a second for catching water drops in action, long exposure photographs for catching subject in action, panoramas.

This is where the camera starts showing its chinks in its features. Of course it being just a semi-SLR, I should crib too much, maybe I have just outgrown it. The features I miss the most now

• A remote control to shoot a picture without shaking the tripod
  
• The same remote control to control the shutter for extended-exposure photography (2hrs etc)
• Built-in time lapse photography feature
• Controllable through USB from my laptop
  
• Proper de-focusing of background
• DC power source input, to hook it up to my car cigar lighter charger or ordinary power source at home
  

Maybe I should stop rambling and go and invest some money in a DSLR like Nikon D60 or a Canon 450D.

Begging - the oldest profession?

Our culture has always looked at begging as a means for salvation and taming the inner ego. Instantly we get a mental image of sadhus, fakirs and buddhist monks begging for food not out of necessity but as a way of life.

What we see now in the pictures below are dismal people begging out of dire necessity, lack of food, clothes (forget clean) and milk for their kids. It moves many of us to give them money, sometimes whatever we can reach to not bothering how much we are giving them.

But are they truly in dire straits or are we being led to believe that with brilliant con artists.

The lady above with a child with gauge cloth around its head, begging for money, crying her heart. Her tear stained muddy face is truly pathetic and painful to see. But the problem is several people must have observed that she is in the same state day after day, for several months. Is that a carefully cultivated attire or harsh reality of the poor person in India.

What is more irritating is when you truly feel bad and do offer them money, and you find them talking with their fellow beggars discussing their state of affairs happily without any worries at all sitting on the traffic islands, waiting for the next red signal and the next person to beg from.

I have had several personal experiences, one of which stands out: there is a seemingly lame old man with a white beard near the junction at khairathabad flyover, and he begs with absolute need and pain. The moment you offer the money and signal turns green, he suddenly becomes normal and walks away fit and fine and starts relaxing with a beedi, now that one act is completed.

See the kid above lying in the lady's arms with a bandage to the leg. The kid would be less than an year old. If it is true its really painful to see, but is it?

What I am rambling about?
I am not naive to believe that we are in a idealistic world. I do understand the reality of begging as profession, beggar mafia, doctors amputating beggars etc. But even knowing all this, does not dull the pain in the heart when you see the suffering or assumed suffering, and other hand feeling bad that quite possibly they are innocent enough and are being pushed to this by criminal minds. I have had seen it first hand a son, actually dropping of his father at a temple to beg for the day.

This problem has many dimensions. First we who are having enough money to live by and have a conscience feel bad about it and would like to bury our pain and conscience by parting with a few rupees. Beggars make us feel that with "Allah tera acha karega", "Bhagwan tera bhala karega", "Devudu ninnu challaga choosthadu" etc.

Second dimension to the problem is there is a possibility that they do not have food, clothes and shelter. As Swami Vivekananda says "A person who is hungry does not need a philosophical discourse on pros and cons of begging, but needs food to satisfy their hunger". True to that statement we cannot stay one day without food.

Third the few rupees we do give them do not meet any of their needs, what do you get with a rupee today? We feel gratified with our benovelence and move on our way but the beggar who is really hungry is left with little money and more hunger because the food is still our of their reach.

Another dimension is we do not know if this is a profession, taken up by themselves or coerced into by others? The giving them money is our mistake, by encouraging them as a easy way to make money, and also putting more such people into danger. This is one of the main reasons why begging is so prevalent in India, when compared to everywhere in the developed and developing world.

What to do?
All cribbing and not enough thinking you say? True. We need to do something. Let me present my thoughts which is only one way to solve this problem. First thing is to stop giving money but give them food and clothes consistently (I will come to details how). Second make people aware that they should stop giving money by distributing pamphlets with two simple sentences "Don't Give Money. We are giving food".

Some articles on begging and other dimensions to it, here and here.

Photography of the mind, heart and soul

Eyes can be blind - but the mind, heart and soul cannot be. The case in point being this site TheBlindPhotographer.com which has exhibited photography of some blind artists. Truly feel delighted at their idea and dedication to the purpose.

What catches you immediately seeing the pictures is their concept and composition. At the face of it we seem to have an advantage over the differently-abled people, but do we really? Are we not distracted away from the inner meaning and beauty, by the external beauty, bright colors and snazzy technique?

Update:
This may look like coincidence but this site was being featured in the CNN "Inside The Middle East" yesterday (03-Sep-2008)

Panorama - The Right Size for our Eyes

It took electronics engineers almost several decades before they realized that our eyes can take much more detail horizontally then a traditional 4:3 ratio screens. Photography on the other hand picked it up much earlier with wide-angle lenses and ultra-wide lenses. But they are probhitively expensive for the average enthusiast.

Here is where some smart photographic techniques and slick photo-editing software will allow you to make some fantastic panoramas. Panoguide.com has some good articles on making panoramas and printing them. DCMag has some more.

My first panorama of Tankbund.

Blinded by Education

Update: Another such incident in Calcutta, another woman injured and another death due to our apathy. Read.

A recent article in Times of India, highlights our society's apathy towards the pain and suffering around them. The print version of Times has a more graphic picture attached below, which begs to ask how can we stomach so much of pain and not react to it.

The picture does show some youngsters who just walk past the lady who is lying down begging for water. Why does the younger generation ignore death throes and requests for water and then go and comfortably guzzle down their coke and frappes in their "cool" coffee shops?

I am not discounting older generations or their apathy, they are sometimes far worse, their thought process still rooted in ideologies of an outdated society. The younger generation with their education and facilities, abundant resources to understand and interact with world at large with internet, television and cellphones and supposedly modern outlook, why are they having so much of disconnect with the pain and need around them?

These youngsters are going to make babies in the future and bring up the next generation of citizens, will this apathy be magnified? Is this apathy in the younger generation an early warning signal of something worse that is yet to come?

Should there be a purpose?

After putting off blogging as a something that introverts like me should not delve into, for several years. I think now is a good time as any for me to start it.

Should there be a topic, subject or purpose? I am not sure, neither do I think I should be sure. Life with its infinite complexities and mysteries is ever tempting me to explore more. Who knows where I will end up tommorrow? There are quite a few things which evoke sincere and subtle emotions and several others which make the soul to scream in pain, and sometimes I am just helpless passerby, taking in the scene with all the senses but not having enough sense of purpose to do anything to improve it.

With an amazingly fickle-mind and not enough focus on any one - I am perfect fit for the role of Jack. With interests ranging from photography to sketching, listening music from rock to classical, reading from fiction to philosophy, and finally being passionate about everything and nothing, I am not sure what I should be blogging or why I should be blogging.

There are times when regular small talk seems so laboured, so pointless and so useless. Not enough people want to talk or do something meaningful, biggest culprit being me.

Maybe this blog is my inner voice's attempt at finding its voice.