Blog moved!!

Hey Guys!

I have moved my blog to my own website at http://www.vmjason.com
I’ll be blogging there from here on out!!

See you there,
Mohan

Spring is here!

Its been almost a month since I scribbled in my blog. Been awfully busy the whole of this month partly due to WordPress downtime and partly due to personal errands. Anyway finally got some time to scribble. Found this interesting article useful on Photoaxe for wannabe photographers like me. It gives a no-brainer information about focal length, apertures etc and much much more.

So, What are you waiting for? Spring is here. Go on, read that. Its that time of that year to capture some natural photographs and impress your friends, don’t you think? I’m out in the fields already. Read on and go shoot some green!!

Peace.

Jam with Scissorkick!

Just came across this cool music blog – Scissorkick. They got some good reviews on upcoming and newly released electronic & rock albums. If you dig alternate music and stuff, Scissorkick might be the blog that you’ll ever need to get in touch with whats happening around the music industry.

They even got a radio blog in their site for you to listen to some cool music while you are at it. Check it out. They’re cool.

Zweitgeist – spooky little thang!

What if there is some little window that lets you see where your buddies are right now on the internet? And what if there is something that reveals other people that are doing the same activities as you on the internet? Spooky, isn’t it? Well, Zweitgeist does exactly the same thing. Its a cute little Firefox extension that reveals other people using the same website as you among other things. It shows you where your friends are while it allows them to communicate with you while you are browsing.

“Zweitgeist is our alter ego, our virtual presence on the internet. Zweitgeist is what makes people visible on the internet. With zweitgeist people who are on the same webpage can see and communicate with each other.

In the real world we see people where ever we go: at the bus stop, at school, in the work place, int the shopping mall, at the gym. If we want, can contact them. When we are surfing the Web, there are many other people on the same website at the same time as us. Unfortunately they have been invisible until now. Zweitgeist give us the opportunity to make ourselves and others visible even beyond single web sites” – Zweitgeist

You can choose an appropriate figure (a zweitgeist character like the above) that looks like you , or looks how you would like to appear. And best of all, zweitgeist is free !

PS:
If you really dig the concept, I encourage you to visit the Virtual Presence website that lists many more Web 2.0 applications/extensions like Zweitergist that specializes in “social browsing”. Check it out.

Mediamax – 25 GB of free online storage

Its been a while since I wrote. Things have been pretty hectic at my end lately. Anyway, just tumbled across this cool new website that gives you 25 GB of free space to save all of your photos, videos and media files. Thought you might find it useful. Check it out.

“MediaMax provides not only raw file storage that’s accessible from any PC, but also file sharing and hosting, MP3 streaming and backup/sync software. Of course, the real highlight is the amount of storage–five times what you get from services like XDrive. However, you’re limited to 1GB’ worth of downloads per month, and the maximum file size is 25MB. Upgrading to a paid MediaMax account (starting at $4.95/month) raises or eliminates these kinds of restrictions. But you don’t even need a credit card to sign up for a free account–just a username and password.” – Lifehacker review

Imitate a “Scanner Darkly”

I guess you all would have seen the cool 2D animation work in the recent blockbuster Scanner Darkly. Well, if you want to have the same effect applied to your photographs, now you can, thanks to this article that outlines some image tweaking applied through Adobe Illustrator to achieve the effect.

Pretty close, huh? But a lot of work, if you ask me. Have some couple hours handy if you want to work on a decent photograph.

Tamil “Hulk”

Whoa! Saw the ads for the upcoming Raj kiran flick “Muni” on Indiaglitz and I liked this one better. Geez, look at all that meat! Eww, its gross but still Raj Kiran looks like a Hulk in that black outfit, don’t he? Its been a long time since we saw him perform his unique stunts in a movie. Its gonna be interesting to watch him nonetheless.

Ready, Set, Click!

Its been a while since I wrote. The whole week has been hectic here at work. Can’t wait for friday already!

Anyhoo, Morguefile.com is offering free online photographic lessons for the feeble hands like me. These lessons are divided in to 10 chapters covering everything from aperture to zoom with each chapter presented with loads of sample photos and assignment. The course seems to be a bit outdated, but still an excellent introduction to digital photography.

I suck big time at taking photos at aperture mode. All I know how to take a good photo is through the “auto” mode in my digital camera, sigh. I’ve been wanting to learn how to take professional looking images myself for quite some time. Well, maybe I’ll learn from these lessons since they are “free”. Who knows?

Pokkiri – Potpourri at its best!

Whew! Just finished watching it. I should say it was entertaining, couldn’t fall asleep or walk away, though in some some boring song sequences I had to. But overall, the film turns out to be a successful remake sporting Vijay in the exact same role that all his fans have come to expect from him or rather love watching him perform and nonethless the film has all the essential and usual “Vijay-istic” elements – the punch dialogues, fast action and romance, to remake a successful block-buster into an equally good one.

I haven’t seen the original Mahesh Babu flick (of the same name) yet, so can’t really make an apples to apples comparison but I read somewhere that Vijay insisted that he does a remake of that. And I believe in my opinion, he did a good job and the role fits him well. Asin, Vadivelu and the rest of the crew don’t entertain much apart from their usual performances. And as far as the direction goes, Prabhu Deva has done a decent job considering the fact this is his debut in directing and the screenplay could have been better. The music is so-so and I could’t seem to recall any number after I watched the movie, except for that mimic of the popular old song – “Vasantha mullai polae”.

I vividly remember how Vijay flicks used to perform while I was in Chennai and can’t forget the huge fanfare they used to create when they were screened, especially at the Prarthana drive-in along the ECR, an area with a dense concentration of Vijay fans. No doubt, ECR will abuzz with the same loyal fans now that Pokkiri is screened there.

In summary, it was a Vijay film that I enjoyed watching after a while and I don’t miss the 2+ hours that I spent watching it.

The “Wow” starts now!

Now that Vista is around the corner, I thought it’d be cool to point you guys to an article at Extremetech which focuses on how to seamlessly upgrade to Vista if you have Windows XP on your PC.

I’ve been wanting to take this sucker out for a test drive myself and find out what the ruckus is all about with this sleek looking MacOS wannabe. Believe it or not, the early reviews are in and all the hype seems to be holding out true so far. Hmm, it better be good for all the years it took (nearly 5 years!) to roll out.

You might want to take it out for a test drive too WITHOUT installing anything on your PC at this Microsoft Virtual Labs site. This is a neat way to get familiar with the look and feel of the new OS, if you plan to become an early adopter.