It is an ordeal to be part of Indian culture if only you are a open-minded individual. I am not exaggerating and nor am I mad:-) it is real, you do not have to set foot on the motherland to feel the prick, traits are there even in non-tropical colonies.
I think due over domestication, animal in them has lost its teeth. No wonder many Indians boast that their society is oldest. People's life do not err, fluctuate, they are steady like railway track, nothing could change the peace except for an earthquake or hurricane. Over domestication has turned individuals in to puppets and an abstract thing called "archaic-society" hold the strings. In fact India hosts a largest assembly of puppet population :-)
Over-domestication has breed family-pride instead of national-pride. If you do not believe look at the stagnant living standard. Living standard would stay the same as long as one stays domesticated. If there are enough people pushing the envelope then the infrastructure will improve, but how much of the population thinks beyond their blood-family.
The society that can not tolerate Pamela Anderson will probably fail to breed an Einstein. Society can not have it all one way.
What is the help being frustrated, you can not change status-quo because fuc*ing population is huge. In such case there are there few things you can do
-Leave the decaying place
-Shut the door to society and live
-If you are not fortunate to execute the above, just know that there are people who understand your misery.
This blog will continue, sadly for generations...
Over-domesticated Indian society
Passage to other side
I used the word passage to create a feeling of exploration so made the passage rough. All along the history, making across a channel has been associated with pride, love and glory and I see the same scene here...
There is an another way to look at this painting and that is as trade between 2-dimensional love and 3-dimensional lust.
This is a scavenged painting....
Three years back, a model posed for students in my painting class, and she sat there for couple of hours, and I could not complete the painting in that window of 2hrs, and I did not even pretend to do so...:-). When the lady left that afternoon, I had barely made any progress and had just captured hers essentials
Two months back, while I was looking for a spare canvas for practicing, came across this painting lying in the same state as I had left 3 years ago, with just the essentials. As I said I did not reproach but wanted to cover the whole canvas with BLUE paint so that I could re-use it for practice work. With this in mind, I started to act and I had covered 90% percent of the canvas with blue expect for the prime part of the body. Then, I stopped for few moments for no reason, and at that time whole canvas had been covered with BLUE expect for the lady with orange body, and it did not require much attention to see some value in that composition. On the second attempt I saw two distinct land/sides: one covered in cold-blue and the other smeared with warm-color, then feeling lucky I stopped painting in order to take bath and there arrived at the current title.
In the coming days, I worked to make it appear like Passage to other side and got the face of rock one side and lady on other side, and note that there was no cave-man standing.
Then the idea of solitary flower came, but thought that having it alone would make it too obvious, so introduced a beholder for stem, in the form of a drawing, looking like cave-man's art work. Using drawing to make the gesture of love made sense because of it's association even gesture looked archaic and less real. Also observe the signs of flame around the beholder and animal face is apparent so sometimes it looks like me a trading of love for lust :-)
Well, irrespective of motives I am happy with this painting, oh hell, they are too. -lol
Other end of human's genteel 'Need'

Influence....
We stretch our purse to us dress ourself as sophisticated individuals in society and also bestow things on our family, to show how sensitive and caring we are. This well-trodden way to become genteel human might not be so humane in the end because I believe some where a tree is going to get knocked down while we are burnishing our image in society. If we fallow the life-line of human-need, we might see a socially honorable human being at one end and a dead tree on the other end. Unfortunately, this is fact of life, we have to pollute to live comfortably, and strictly speaking every individual in civilized society puts strain on Nature in one way or other, and I do that all the time and so you also, in spite of knowing that our land is a train with no breaks.
coming back to painting...
I presume that all most all components are obvious expect for the orange object on left, and that I see as a burning electric bulb but some of my friends saw that as person's back, and I think both the impressions make sense because man pays and the electric bulb, a proxy, hunts.
This is how I got this idea; I had exhausted myself by brooding over this subject for months and suddenly this idea of leaf and electric cable entangled, as if in a duo came to my mind, and I felt relieved and was extremely happy to see the noose because it symbolized how ruthless humans could get in order to attain day-to-day comforts.
This is how the things evolved; before I started the actual work, I just had three core components in mind, and they were cable, tree-branch and noose. I knew how to glue them together but did not know how to fill rest of the canvas, and this was expected because I was not painting based on any photograph. Then moving to the backdrop of the scene, I thought of filling the left side of canvas with an orange glow as if coming from of a distant street light, and wanted this light to gradually get darker, reaching violet at the center of the canvas, and go further to become dark blue near the right edge. So I wanted the background to grow as follows (start-with-Orange)->(dark-red->violet-in-middle)->(dark-blue-on-right-edge).
With these impressions in mind, I started working on creating the effect of distant street light, and while I was struggling to do this, I saw the orange colored shape resembling a hut develop and was in two minds whether to go with hut or continue to the effort to get street-light effect but I did not favor the idea of hut because it did not go well with the overall story of the painting. I tried again to get the street-light effect but the orange glow started looking like an electric bulb, and this is something which I had never imagined but electric-bulb fitted well with over all theme of painting so I happily embraced the light-bulb instead of street light:-). This is an example for spontaneous evolution. I was worried that noose could get lost in dark background but electric-bulb took care of the that, and it's light was strong enough to illuminate the grass/land surrounding noose, thus I was able to make noose stand out.
Color of noose...
I selected bright blue for electric cable because of two reasons: one is that color blue, stands for industrialization(energy needs and atomization of life) and the another is that blue colored loop stood well against warm orange background.
Apprehensions....
-I was tense and too cautious while working on leaf so they look somewhat
artificial....
- This painting is for just personal fancy, without any great intension because we
all know well that day-to-day needs are unsurmountable...
Riddled with money

Influence...
I have listened to the kins of economy talk about it's growth and they really believe that growth as the ultimate truth but many outsiders, who are not enemies, do not see that way. Apart from this, I strongly believe that nature usually pays for every dollar that we earn and I brooded about this for months and some how this idea of leaf bearing a hole, looking like $, came to my mind. The idea in raw form was to draw a leaf with perforation resembling dollar sign.
Now coming back to painting....
I wanted just the leaf nothing else on canvas and so thought of using a small canvas to hold just a leaf. Around that time, I had abandoned a painting, done on a small canvas and it had streaks of colors drawn using random acrylic colors; and these colors were dark enough to stage a leaf starkly, so I decided to re-use that abandoned 8' x 10' canvas.
Around the same time my friend introduced me to his friend in Goth club and he being an experienced painter suggested me to practice several times before moving on to eventual canvas. I too had thought of this earlier but had not acted on it and some how practicing was not my style and lack of time was my excuse but his words made my guilt float so determined, I started practicing timidly, by drawing a leaf with $ imprinted on it and the canvas that I used had white background but my eventual canvas had dark background. Well it was not a perfect practice session but reduced my guilt, see I am not a true painter :-)
Then I started working on real canvas and painted a leaf and $. It took several days to get the leaf & dolor right and you know I am not well versed in painting :-). The dolor sign that I had drew had one line but my friend said that there should be two lines and I too had suspected this but the google search had mislead me. Then I re-worked to get another line on $. So if look closely you will see two lines on S :-)
I still do not think that I have done good job here because few could not visualize it as $ and and emphasis this point, I prepared following collage by placing same painting in two different orientations.
What about the face?
In the middle of the canvas, there is a face with two eyes and that was an accident; and yes that face looks like the face in Munch's painting Scream.
day after Valentaine's day
heaven weaved Marriage
in two dimensions
but untied the land to
consummate in 3 dimensions
Is 'save-planet' agenda no more virgin?
Govt's bio-fuel policies are influenced by lobbyist and also politically driven, and are not solely intended to save planet. You think I am cynical and may be you are true to some extent :-) Example: Brazil uses Sugarcane for Bio-fuel but US does not; and the reason is Sugar cane is expensive in US and why is it expensive? and Can we make it cheap ?. Based on a historic agreement between Sugarcane growers and US Govt, price of Sugar can not be adjusted and so it will always stay high. This shows how one can not be honest and also make a successful policy.
Cutting forest to grow Corn is a bad idea because along with forest goes the 1000 of years of ecosystem and bringing back this ecosystem is not as simple as planting an another tree somewhere else. What I think is that loosing forest to save few corbon does not look like a good deal to me and we should continue to use what ever we have till we come up with some healthy alternative. Look at Indonesia where farmers are turning the forest in to Palm oil (another Bio-fuel source) plantation.
I was wondering why no Govt is speaking openly against Bio-fuels and last month EU accepted that it made a mistake by endorsing Bio-fuels.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7186380.stm
Also a company working on Cellulosic Ethonal based Bio-fuel got acquired by GM and unfortunately that news did not get any coverage.
http://www.dailytech.com/...article10320.htm
In this current environment where EVERY decision is taken based on the economic growth, the business community has started making these superficially green products instead of producing durable products to curb rampant consumerism. Tech companies phase out their product in 6 months to show economic growth and then try to sell replacement as 'green-version'.
[waste generated by phased out product +
energy spend on making,transporting,marketing Green replacment]
does not get outweighted by
[greenness of Green replacment]
How pure is the conscience of politicians who talk about saving planet and in the next breath approve tax rebate so that consumer can buy more goods?
Have not we already polluted the pious cuase like "saving-planet"?
Online books stops & postal service miserable in India
How it all started...
I live in Newyork and wanted to send few books to my family in Bangalore. You think it is as easy as going online and placing an order... no that easy...
And after reading economic pages of newspaper, you would also think that there would be one because it is so called emerging economy at least on economic pages.
Miserable online book stores.
I started by searching for online retail bookstores located in India and was happy to find one and I even placed the order. But the retailer came back the next day saying that he could not find not even a single book among 11. We shoudl all thank the store for not adding to mysery by charging my credit card.
Barnes and Nobles...
Then I ordered same books in Barnes and Nobles(an online retal bookstore located in US) and opted to ship using non-courier service. Price of book was 62$ and shipping cost came to 67$
Dishonest Postal service
Non-courier services use Indian postal service and the books sent by Barnes and Nobles never reached Bangalore, even after waiting for two months. The book stores declared the shipment as lost and refunded my money. Then I had to shipped using FedEx and books reached the destination. Price of book was 62$ and shipping came to 89$
How does globalization help?
Guys, I juuu....st want to buy books online... nothing fancy here.....
Investors are driven by numbers, opinions hardly to by what helps the people; to give you an example if the cell phone market looks good everyone jumps in to it and beat it to death. I know once the online books market becomes popular, investors will lineup like sheeps of a hurd....
In the end
Does economic booms means improvent in ordinary folk's life style or just raise in wealth of call-center-investor?
Sharing Classic ASP and ASP.Net 'session' data
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20021207.asp
According to above article you can do it by submitting a "FORM" from classic ASP.
Go throught it...
Google's ads. has made web a vulgar place
Google's ad. are like leeches there are on every webpage. Like the above example, placement of ad. could be deceptive.
I do not know why at all a company pays for placing it's ad. because there would be 10 other ads. on a single page, competing for attension. Google is just making money by letting every tom & dick showcase his or her's greed.
Web user is a victim of this maelstrom of Google ads in few ways:
a) Many of these ad. links might take you to a spam site; and a novice user, could easily land himself in trouble.
b) These ads. does not have iota of creativity and are out right vulgar.
c) Web pages have lost their aesthetics and thus taken out the pleasure out of leisurely web browsing.
Is "disable Google ads." button the solution?
What about Microsoft adding a special button to IE called "disable Google ads." button? And can this land MS in an anti-trust pit?
over shopping leads to Breast cancer
"Hormonal imbalance induced by over shopping could lead to Breast cancer"
This is a funny idea but why not try. This might stop us from buying the things that we do not really need. When ever we dispose a working product to replace it with a new one, we generate a chain of waste.
I feel like bribing some University Professor to voice this outrageous opinion in the name of saving planet :-)
as flower blooms
It is such a common phenomenon; petals stay clung to each other during their infancy, but as they bloom, the distance between them also increases.
bare legs in baskets
delicate, bare limbs
will fetch you footwear,
not one but a pile; to cover
till you step-out of this land
Slender fruit, being seasonal
will perish and slide,
but the bestowed baskets,
will persist and stay high
Quote by Cohen
"...she was living with some boy
who gives her soul an empty room and gives her body joy..."
-Leonard Cohen in "Death Of A Ladies' Man"
Monitoring Hard Disks with SMART
In my PC, Chasis fan and CPU fan used to run at 2500rpm and 2900rpm respectively and it was noisy; then I enabled Fan-Q-control in BIOS and CPU fan came down to 950rpm and consequently machine became silent. I have set to Q-Control is OPTIMUM. According to ASUS tool CPU & SYSTEM temparatures are 12C and 30C respectively; but HDDs are hot and I sensed it physically and this is not scientific way to measure.
I came across an article on standard that HDD manufacturer's compy to and according to that standard HDD is supposed to provide info on it's health...
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6983
Black & Decker, why the fuc* rice cooker stops working?
Today my Black & Decker stopped turning on...
1) what fuc*ing unmastered complicated technology runs inside this rice cooker?
2) why you fuck*s make product that fails in 2 years?
3) why do you create unnecessary waste to pollute the planet and then come on TV and talk about saving the fuck*ing planet?
You corporates are disgusting people... I do not even have words for you fucke*s
"Raven hair turns gray" -- how it happened?
This image took shape in my mind during the last weeks of my interaction with my gray-haired friend, Jeanne. This sketch is a last word in that conversation that lasted couple of years.
Following are components and ideas of sketch.
Face
There is a face in the bottom corner and every other component of this sketch belongs to the person represented by this face; and probably that individual is dead or in the vicinity of it. When I started working on this sketch, first, face came out as man's face, may be due to wrinkles and later I tried to change it to woman's face; and it seems eventually it ended up having tiny features of both gender.
Life and it's change
In this sketch, Hair represents life and variation in the density of hair shows change in strength. Hair starts thick with undulations, fluctuation; and with the age it becomes flat,lean and dim, like river in desert.
I used Rapidograph pens to draw hair but Rapidograph pens produces flat, unwavering lines. So, to bring some texture in, I had to use 5 different pens, each containing different size nib(0.25mm, 0.35mm, 0.50mm, 0.60mm and 0.80mm).
Breadth of Life or Age
Line made by parting hair(parting-line) on the scalp is used to show breadth or age or movement in life; and this parting line looks like river. When I started working on this sketch, I wanted parting-line to resemble a winding road and it was a struggle to make it appear like one. After completing the sketch, I went back and changed the road in to river and also threw in two boats; the moving boat conveys living and capsized boat shows stagnation or end.
Why this name 'Raven hair turns gray'?
Even after weeks after completing this sketch, I did not have a proper title. I believe that there should be proper name to represent a painting. Few undeserving titles like "flow" were in the list. Few months back I heard a haunting song by Delgados, and they had used the phrase "raven hair" and it was still lingering in my mind; and one night, when everyone was sleeping I stole this from Delgados and connected with my sketch.
I had to practice by drawing few samples to fill-in the gaps in my imagination; and here are those samples.
Final sketch of "Raven hair turns gray"
Trial 1
Trial 2
Trial 3
Calculating power consumption of PC...
I am not to write about save power to salvage the drowning world....
Recently I found out that on AMD Dual Core machine, "Smart sharpening" of Adobe Photoshop takes just 2sec to sharpen a image of resolution, 3000x4500. That shook me because same operation takes 40 sec on my 1.8ghz single core PC !!!!
So I started thinking of buying a new motherboard, RAM, Dual Core CPU...
but I wanted to retain existing power supply and was not sure whether it can feed 5HDs and also new Dual Core CPU. So, I wanted to know, how to measure the power consumed by 5 hard disks that are currently sitting in my PC.
This hightly informative and also practical post guided me while estimating the power consumed by devices of my PC.
In the early stages of this research I found out that once started that my 410W PSU can supply the WATS required by 5HDs and DualCore CPU, but in this investigation I found out that what also matters is the power required at the time booting because devices draw their peak current ONLY at the time of booting. So I dug out manufacturer's specification for all HDs and noted down the maximum current needed at the time of booting.
This is my power supply (PSU) specification
As the image shows my PSU could deliver a maximum of 20Amps @ 12V.
Following shows the current drawn by various devices, at the time of booting..
Samsung(250gb)----->1.9
Samsung(250gb)----->1.9
Maxtor(200gb)------>1.5(guess)
WD(60gb)----------->1.8
Stg(160gb)--------->2.0
Case fans(3)------->0.5
AMD Dual CPU------->8.24
VGA---------------->0.5
DVDR--------------->0.8
-----------------------------
Total 19.14A
-----------------------------
Conclusion: 19.2A is not far from 20A, which is the maximum current that my existing PSU can deliver, so I decided to buy an external harddrive enclosure to host Samsung 250gb SATA drive and this would bring down boottime current demand from 19.2 to 17.1...
Mount St. Helens a collage
Recently I was at Mount St. Helens hiking Norway Pass/Boundary Trail; this is a 5 mile hike which took us right across the cradle of the crater. It is hard to describe the things that we saw on this trail,I would say that land looked like a collage of tree, rock, ash etc.
I came across a site with interesting facts about Mount St. Helens.
http://www.olywa.net/radu/valerie/mshbefore.html?
http://www.olywa.net/radu/valerie/mshduring.html?
Indian ink bleeds on Gesso board
I admire the flexibility of using acrylic color ink and acrylic paint in a same painting. This works out quite well on an canvas made out of cotton, but fails easily on Gesso board, but I was expecting Indian ink to hold on, but it turned out that even Indian ink bleeds, but not to the extent of Acrylic color Ink; any bleeding is unacceptable.
Last week I initiated a sketch using Indian ink on a Gesso board and today, by accident came to know that ink is bleeding. Fortunately I had not proceeded deep in to the sketch. Initially I could not believe this, I doubted that I could have re-filled the pen without drying it properly after cleaning it with water, but that turned out to be not true. To test this out once for all, using Indian ink, I scribbled on a Gesso board and few hours later a wet brush was able smear the lines. Here is the picture of this....
So the lesson is NEVER to use ANY ink (Acrylic color ink or Indian Ink) on Gesso board; canvas seems to be best in gripping ink
.