Been in US for last 9 months now

I have been living in Cincinnati for last 9 months now. I had almost forgotten my blog until Google reminded me of it.

Google+

Joined Google+ after Panigrahi invited me there. Yet to explore its various options. Looks good as far as the first impression goes. Lets see if people really give up/reduce Facebook in favor of G+
Looking at the popularity of Facebook I think it will be quite a task for Google+ to penetrate into the lives of Facebook users. People have become quite used to Facebook now and I am not sure if they would be interested in trying out something new. One best part is that since it is from Google, you would get all you Google related accounts linked to it. Although not sure if it would add great value to your net surfing but it will surely be cool to be able to link your Picasa photos to G+ and share with your friends.

In Pune

I am in Pune for quite some time now. Today after 11 years met with Praveen Pillai. Had a good time reliving our old days and discussing about all our batchmates. It is really good to be back in touch with your old friends with whom you shared so many happy memories.
I don't know how long would I be there in Pune but planning to meet up with Anupam Agarwal also.

Just waiting to get back to Bangalore where my family is.

IE 7 Sucks with Blogspot

In IE 7 I was not able to post anything for quite some time now. So here I am posting from Google Chrome. Its a nice browser and all the new elements of blogspot seems to work fine here.
Things have been pretty hectic for some days now. Day after tomorrow I am leaving for Chennai and will be back on 15th-June night.

Vivaan has become too stubborn these days. Its a huge project to make him drink milk twice a day. These days he is into cricket big time. Always like to bat but never bowling.

this isn't good .... i can't type anything in the text area. Neither I can upload any images. whats happening to blogger and IE 7 -> Is it an IE 7 problem OR blogger.com problem

Latest Oils & Water Colors

Weekend that was

Friday evening saw "Book of Shadows - Blair Witch Project 2" followed by "Shutter Island"
Saturday had a good time with old college mates at NGV Club in Koramangala while watching the one sided match of Chennai Super Kings versus Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Sunday went just like that and in the evenings I saw Scream 4 (junk movie).
Hopefully, I might be getting into a project soon, so it might happen that I again disappear from this blogosphere but will try to scribble here once in a while.
Season of paintings - Tried my hands at Water colors and Oil colors this time (for a change). Trying hard to learn water colors but it seems to be really a challenge learning on your own.
Oil colors are fun to work with, but really gets messy and cleaning up requires a lot of effort.
Will try to upload some pictures of my new paintings soon.

Exactly 1 year Back

I had mentioned that I would be returning to the world of blogging soon after spending my vacation at Chhindwara and Bilaspur. That "soon" turned into a good 1 year and here I am after full 365 days. Let us see, whether this time I am able to post regularly.

In summary, after last assignment about which I mentioned in my blog, I was about to fly to US on for a long term opportunity for one of Wipro's customer, but my luck again ditched me and my travel got cancelled. I got a chance to visit UK for the 1st time. I went to Nottingham (3 hrs. away from London) for 2 weeks and had a good time there. As soon as I was back, I got into a new assignment as a Project Manager for Charles Schwab account, responsible for managing the automation project deliveries. I was again supposed to fly to US for this project and again my L1 Visa played the spoilsport and I was stuck at offshore. What an experience it was !! Experience of these 10 months (From July-2010 till May-2011) have been enormous. I do not want to get into the details of these 10 months but in short it was a lifetime experience.
Now again I am back in free pool and searching for projects (specifically for requirements in US)
Let us see how life treats me this time.

7 months were too long

7 months prior I had mentioned about writing something, but 7 months became an year and the year just passed in a jiffy.
So where was I? Of course after coming back from HP (2009 Jun) I was on bench (read "idle") for quite some time and there were lots of UPS and DOWNS . I can write a whole 400 page Novel about the time I spent from July-2009 till October-2009..... But let me not eat up a lot of space here right now
Fortunately (may be I have done something good in my previous birth) I moved to the Automation Practice here in Wipro and then my stint with Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) ODC Started and I started working day and night, night and day from October-2009 last week, time flew and it was 30th April when I came back to life.
After a long and hectic year of LOADS OF WORK & UNLOADS OF WORK I took a well-deserved (thats what my boss said. I don't know whether its true or false) vacation starting 6th May until 24th May.
Here I am back to the blogsphere and will try to keep it updated until I get caught by someone and become a part of the vicious cycle again.

Coming Soon ...........

After a hiatus of 7 months I will be "Coming Back to Life" .............
7 months have been like a Sinusoidal Curve

I am B2B

Finally, after an year long assignment with Hewlett Packard India I am back to Bench in Wipro Electronic City campus. Yet to find out what is there in store for me in the days to come. First and foremost I want to relax for a few days as I have been working really hard for last few weeks.
It was a surprise to me when HP folks decided to bid farewell to me by taking us out on lunch yesterday to The Dhaba (on Outer Ring Road). Everyone who has worked with me during my stay at HP was there on lunch. After having a sumptuous lunch we were back in HP office and I got back to resolving issues which people had with our Framework and the API interface of the framework. After working with HP and helping them to resolve issues, I was free by 6:30 PM and for the first time in last 3 months I reached home early at around 7:15 PM.
The worst part was my headache which started troubling me since afternoon and by the time I was home it was at peak. Somehow managed to get relief from medicines and Divya Dhara (An ointment which is to be applied on forehead during headache) but only at 10:30 PM. Did not have dinner and after watching TV for a while slept at 11:30 AM.
Arrived at Electronic City at 10:30 AM and found that there has been a lot of shuffling of parking lots as there is a parking lot construction going on in EC-4 campus. Had to park my car at the other end of Wipro EC-4 campus and walked down to Tower-12 to find a place to connect my laptop and check mails.
So far so good. Need to meet up with my boss to get some understanding of the situation in Testing Services and the current openings which will suit me.

Might get to spend a lot of time on my blog for a few days atleast. Lets see how long and how much.

Started Using Internet

When I was in my undergraduate college doing computer science engineering from NIT Surat (India). In our 2nd year we got a computer centre and that was the place where I started using internet using the text based browser "lynx" on network consoles running linux operation systems.

Looking for a ruler

I wanted to see how big will a 8 inches by 6 inches envelope be and thought of printing a exact ruler

But How? I searched google for a real ruler image which can be printed on my office paper and this is what I got: Printable Rulers

Nice and Handy for a quick measurement :-)

BrightKite

BrightKite is another site which I came across while browsing through the businessweek slideshow of Best Young Tech Entrepreneur. Based on their description on their web-site:

" Brightkite is a location-based social network. In real time you can see where your friends are and what they're up to. Depending on your privacy settings you can also meet others nearby."

How good OR how bad are they will be known only when I spend some more time on their site. But time is at a premium right now. So I better get back to work, or else .........

Wild Pockets

I was going through a slide-show on the  BusinessWorld web-site about Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs 2009 when I discovered a new web-site called WildPockets.com which allows people to create 3D games by themselves. 

Just registered to try it out. They seem to have a lot of tools to design your own stuff. Be it 3D Advertisements, 3D Product features and many other things. Lets see how good it is.

Some Disappointing Updates

Building of games and other 3D content require installing an ActiveX control which when clicking on install gives an error in the WildPockets page --> Could not download the installer. Now who is playing the spoilsport here? Browser, Organization Firewall OR Wildpockets.com.

Some pics from 27th March

Its been a couple of days since I updated my blog. Yesterday while checking our art group bangaloreartforum mails, I came across a bunch of pics which Prabha had taken during our Lalbagh artist camp. I thought of uploading some of the good ones (according to me), so here they are:
Me Messing around with dry pastels














I seem to be happy, but about What?


Jagdish Sir giving Finishing Touches to my work












Our group of 5


End product after Master's Finishing touches











And the master's own work

An Interesting Book

Recently I came across a web-page (I don't remember the links which took me there) and saw a review/information about an art book which I think is a MUST BUY for me. 

Title

An Illustrated Life: Drawing Inspiration from the Private Sketchbooks of Artists, Illustrators and Designers

Author 

Danny Gregory

BAF Meets at Chitrakala Parishad

On the 12th of April, members of BAF met at a truly inspirational place - The one and only Chitrakala Parishad. Jagdish, Jyotirmoy, Subodh, Usha and a new member Hegde were a part of this meeting which took place in the entry lobby of Parishad. We came up with a couple of thoughts and decided to take up the following as our action items for coming weeks:

1. Have a road/street show of our paintings in Lalbagh (the other side which has the tower on a mountain view), but before that publish the event in all possible media (newspapers, online, Bangalore shopping guide etc.). We also plan to take our paintings to that show and see if there are any interested buyers. But the important point here is that, people should know that an event like this is happening. The date is yet to be finalized but its definitely going to take place within next month.
2. Create a new blog and upload all the soft copies of our art on that blog. The object of this blog would be to sell our paintings. All the members will send soft copies of their art and Subodh will create the blog and upload all the pictures.

Looking forward to a long weekend

As I write this post, I am looking forward to a long weekend starting tomorrow, i.e. Good Friday.

Lots of work at office and will continue to be there until I am at this location. Good part is that I will be moving from this project pretty soon.

On Sunday i.e. 12th April I would be visiting Chitrakala Parishad to see Shobha Goswami's painting exhibition and also to meet up with fellow BAF members for a quick meeting.

Rest Later

Hectic Weekend

This weekend was hectic as expected. Some updates:

1. Received my wife and son at Hyderabad's new airport (I found it much better than the Bangalore airport although both the airports are constructed by the same company :-)). I can write a lot about the goods as well as the bads about both the airports but not now, may be some time later.
2. I met 3 of my old school friends at Hyderabad yesterday. Some of them I met after almost 15 years ..... Had a great (but short) time meeting them.