Random?? (5 things - Week 63)

There's always a pattern to the way I do things in my life. If given a target to achieve within a specific time period, I would start off in all earnest - planning, thinking, prioritizing and what not. But soon the initial drive will decrease, and I would start doing something else just cos I can. By the time the halfway point of the time period says "bye bye" to me, I start getting jitters and start working on finishing it, and mostly, finish the work by the 80-90% mark so that I can cruise to the finish line.

Such is not the way this blog gets written though. An idea is born everyday, an idea dies everyday.So, what you get is mostly what I think about on Fridays. There are the odd ones from other weekdays which make the list, but the net result of all this is that you tend to miss out on most of the stuff I would like to write about.

After the festivities of the month before, the past two weeks have been pretty dull with no special topics getting posted here. It's at times like these that the words of a senior of mine rings around in my head - "Don't try to force yourself to write. Write during a week only if you feel that it's worth to be written about." But the problem I would face in following that philosophy was the reason that most of my previous articles had an average of months in between their publishing here. 

Recently, someone advised me on the fact that trying is as good as winning. As you would expect I agreed with him 100%. But the problem was he was talking about things which are mainstream - things which people will applaud you for if you try for it.

We all remember the story of the king/general who fought an enemy army 7 times, and failed. But he was inspired by a spider to do it one more time, and eventually win. Now this story gets talked about a lot because it was a great job done by a great person, nameless though he may be. What we tend to forget is that there are people, who tend to love the non-mainstream. I won't ask you to go about singing about their conquests, but don't begrudge them with "Pffts" and "Mehs" if you can.

Anyways, RANT OVER.

For this weeks "5 things", we'll go through the five topics that came to my mind through this week.

Let's begin, shall we??

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1. Monday - Facts??

Did you know that there are two kinds of twins - fraternal and identical. Fraternal twins means that they began with two eggs and two sperms. In identical twins, there's only one egg and one sperm, but it splits into two later.

Well, this series was originally intended to be a "Did you know" series comprising of the things I learned during the week. And since it has been a long time since we had one such post here, Monday was spent thinking of what other similar/interesting facts I could dig up.

2. Tuesday - Nothing??

This is what I feel would be a grand post by itself. A blog about nothing. I end up thinking about such a post at least once every week, but all my ideas for it have failed to excite me till now.

3. Wednesday - Migraines??

Started off as a slight headache concentrated on the right hand size of my head. In the end, it became too much, and ended my day early. Migraines was the topic too, but I did not get much time to think about it.

4. Thursday - "Mom & Me"

See the above video. That is the call for a new reality show, set soon to be aired on a prominent regional channel. So, what the difference? It is calling for mothers and their newborn children to take part in it. During that video, the actress says something to the effect of

"if your kid has brains, beauty, and/or the capability to respond intelligently to external stimuli, and if he/she is between the age group of 1 month to 3 years, ..."

Tell me how a child of 1 month responds to external stimuli. And what skills is a child of 1 month going to show off in front of the camera. There has been very less research on the effects of reality show pressure on people (young and old), but I guess no doctor will advice a mother to take her child on something as stressful as this.

This was supposed to be the main topic of this blog, but I need to get my ideas in order before I can release it. Expect a full post on this soon.

5. Friday - THIS!!!

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Well, a few minutes spent on the beach side in the evening, swarmed as it was with crabs and rats, was well spent indeed. A few minutes alone should be made compulsory every week for every individual. To just sit there and count the waves was nothing short of magical. And a lot of thinking gets done in between too. ;)

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Well, that's all for this week.

Hope you have a great weekend. Meet you in the comment sections, if you are interested.

'til next week.

Aptitude (5 things - Week 62)

Let's go for a cliched beginning, shall we??

The Oxford Dictionary defines the noun "Aptitude" as "A natural ability to do something".

So what's the big deal with it right now, I hear you ask??

Well, with all things going well and by God's good grace, I'll be attending the second on-campus placement drive at the end of next month. Four years have passed since I've subjected myself to the rigours of aptitude tests. My attempt to test my aptitude at CAT last year was thwarted by the untimely arrival of Jaundice, which also played its part to put an end to my last career.

So, the oncoming tests and tribulations are, hopefully, the deliverance I've been waiting for since I can remember. Not to say that I'm studying my ass off or taking too much pressure from all this. In fact, the events of the just concluded week showed me up for being unprepared in many ways.

Aptitude. Again, that word makes it appearance. As an initial screening tool, most of the companies use Aptitude exams as a barometer to measure the capability of the interested applicants. Aptitude exams consists of mainly below tenth grade subject matter, derived from basic Mathematics, English and sense of logical reasoning. Of these, English is, thankfully, not that much of a problem for me (many thanks to this blog).

Logical reasoning for me is something which works superbly when it works, and fails miserably when it doesn't. And the other part is Mathematics. I've never failed to impress on anyone the undying love I've for the subject, with all its operators, x's, and integrals and transforms, etc etc. But I was stumped this week when I was asked what the root for a simple quadratic equation is.

That hurt the enormous amount of pride I had, and has resulted in some work on my part to brush up on the basics. And here, for the five things for this week, we'll go through some of the basic things in Mathematics.

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1. Solving a general second degree polynomial equation.

Remember the variations of ax2 + bx + c = 0 we had to do to solve for x?? Well, at least remember the equation for the roots, the sum of roots and the product of roots. Very handy for such problems.

2. Finding the LCM and HCF of a set of numbers.

The quest for the Lowest Common Multiple and Highest(Greatest) Common Factor is made easier by the Ladder Method. It's explained below.

And here's another example

3. Area of a triangle from the length of the sides.

Heron's formula, often pun-ingly claimed and used as Hero's formula is what you use to get the answer for this problem. Explained nicely in the picture below.

4. The values of sin, cos and tan.

These values are very useful when you are trying to find the height of a tree on the other side of river. Remember the angles of incidence, elevation and depression??

5. BODMAS

I know, you'll claim this to be very simple. But do remember this when you do your calculations.

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Even if you aren't preparing for an exam, I would advice you to go through such basic stuff once in a while. You surely wouldn't want to be in the position of the mother in the movie "1983", who had to escape from the scene when her child asks her what LCM is? :D ;)

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BlogThis!

Old is Gold (5 things - Week 61)

I was at my cousin's home yesterday evening. playing hide and seek with my three year old nephew. That was when my cousin's cousin (my second cousin) came there to meet her with her two year old daughter. Now, I was playing negotiator between the two 'chottas', as they gauged each other up, and decided to share the toy resources.

Seeing as they both wanted the same things, while not being generous enough to share or divide the toys, we decided to keep them busy with cartoons, and my cousin put on the "Tom & Jerry" DVD. As the cartoon began, I was baffled by how fast the fighting siblings put their differences aside and started to enjoy the show.

This little episode reminded me of the time when my brother and myself would settle all our differences when it was time to watch cartoon shows in our childhood. And for this week's post, we'll be going through a few of those good, old shows.

P.S. This list is not the order of my preference among these shows. I'm just jotting down as I recollect them.

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1. Spongebob Squarepants

How naive can you be? Not as naive as Spongebob for sure. The hours spent watching this series reminds me of the good old times like anything. And even though I was not sure of how Patrick could be like, well, Patrick, growing up has opened up to me to the effects of pot and now I know how.

2. The Flintstones

A dinosaur to cut your lawn, another to trim your beard. One to take your picture, another to fly you across land and sea. One thing you can never level against Flintstones is the lack of imagination. They used the dinosaurs to do everything, and created a wonderful stone age for us to enjoy.

3. Rugrats

I wonder if we ever were like these "Rugrats" when we were little. I wonder if my nephew thinks like Tommy. But I can assure you that if we were to be anything approaching such hyperactive kids, we would behave exactly like them.

4. Dexter's Laboratory

Before the other Dexter series came into being, the word Dexter brought to our mind a nerdy, little boy in a labcoat, trying his level best to outwit his enemies, and keep his sister out of his lab. A jolly good way to spend your time. And the first show to teach me a little bit of French, "omelette du fromage", even though I'm being told that it's wrong now. The correct way to say “Cheese Omelette” in french is “Omelette Au Fromage”.

5. Tom & Jerry

Now, if there is a cartoon series which can rival Charlie Chaplin movies for their universality, it is Tom and Jerry. Going beyond age, race, language and location, this is one show that appeals to everyone. To give you an example, I've watched this with my grandfather, my parents, my brother, my friends, and recently with my nephew. It's something else, isn't it?

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Only five shows have been mentioned here. Scooby Doo; The Jetsons; Courage the cowardly dog; Ed, Edd and Eddy; Powerpuff Girls; Looney Toons; Fairy OddParents, etc etc .. This is excluding all the story based series like Swat Kats, Centurions, Samurai Jack, etc. In between all these shows, we have grown up to be what we are, with these cartoons modulating our viewpoints and expectations. Looking at the current crop of cartoons that are being shown, I wonder how my nephew's generation will grow up.

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Last month has been monumental for us over here at "Excuse Me Please". The number of contributor's here has DOUBLED!! From one to two, that is. My brother has generously supplied us with a poem that he has written, Number 9. And if all things go well, we'll have another guest writer over here this coming week. And for all this, we've to thank you all for being here. In the past month, we've had nearly 1000 visitors and that is something. We hope to see you here again and again and again. ;)

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Well, that's all for this week.

Hope you have a great weekend. Meet you in the comment sections, if you are interested.

'til next week.

Number 9 (Guest Post)

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It gives me immense pleasure to welcome the first real guest writer onto this platform. Inspired by a divine sight he had the fortune to have within his ken, the budding poet has let his emotion and imagination flow freely. Here are the verses of 'Number 9', which is published here with the consent of its creator, Saiprasad S A, my brother.

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It was long ago in summer when,

I saw her standing beneath the lights,

Like an angel from a gospel hymn,

She glowed through the dark night.

Before her beauty I stood thunderstruck,

I knew I couldn't look away,

And the blush on her face reminded me,

That it was gold that glittered that day.

She said, You're sweet my darling,

But the winter is just days away.

And soon I shall be departing,

When the winter winds come this way.

I had known it was bound to happen,

But I wished it wasn't true.

Our days were filled with passion,

But time had flown by so soon.

- Saiprasad

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You can leave the comments for the author here, or contact him directly at his Facebook Id, Sai Sreekumar

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The Latest Pirates (5 things - Week 60)

Indulge me for a moment, will you?

Well, not for just a moment actually. I would prefer if you would sit right through this whole post, as I try to capture in words, the double life that was lived out in the past. Events that happened more than six years ago are always had to recollect, but not so hard if they were special.

And "THE LATEST PIRATES" is always special to us. We have been described on the Facebook page as "The Latest Pirates are passionate filmmakers devoted to creating short films/videos/remixes for viewing pleasure.".

In short, when we thought we had a perfect combination of a song, a story and a character, we went ahead and made a video out of it. Amateur-ish is the best way to describe it. All we had was a drive to do something. There were no guidelines, no rules, no signboards, but most importantly no precedents. There was nothing for people to compare this work with.

The one thing which made those videos unique was also sadly its biggest drawback. There was no audible dialogues, no commentary, no background score - just a song from a movie/album, which was played almost always in its entirety. This was mainly because we didn't have the resources, or the knowledge to work with sounds. So, we felt it will be easier to just let go of it completely.

But this factor of no original audio has ensured that such a brand of videos remain unique to us. The short film boom in this part of the world came as soon as we decided to hang up our metaphorical director hats. And it has been properly utilized by many a capable soul.

These days, the number of short films being released has reached a huge number. It bodes well for the overall film industry, as more people are given a chance to showcase their talents. But, talking to people who are active in this mini industry, I get the feeling that it has gone beyond the realms of mostly having fun. The same tensions that we find in the main industry like deadlines, clients, sponsorship etc have begun affecting this field also. Luckily, that was not the case when we were doing what we did.

Just take deadlines for example. The first video to come out under the banner of The Latest Pirates took almost two years to make. That is for an effectively four minute video, we took 24 full months. That is about 10 seconds of the video was done every month. That was not actual rate though. The story behind has already been recollected under the title, "The Pirates are coming".

When it was mentioned to someone recently that we took these videos more than five years back, that too with the video being captured in its glory by a 2 megapixel camera, the editing being done with home-use editing softwares, with the actors and the technicians coming from a fixed pool of unpolished enthusiasts, I was proud to see their eyes widen in wonder. With next to nil marketing through social networking in that era, we managed to gather a humble following through our sheer determination to "make something for the viewer's pleasure."

That is my request/advice to anyone who is thinking of making anything for the public to devour. Always make sure that you don't drive the customer away. And that advice applies none the better at this moment, as I should probably stop singing praises about our group. What this post was actually intended for was to capture the flow of events from that era and the epilogue. Let's get down to it now.

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1. Neela Bucket

Officially, not a video under the The Latest Pirates banner.
Officially, only the second video to be conceptualized.
But officially, this was the first video to be released, and it still remains the most watched among our videos at over 32000+ views.

"Neela bucket" was actually a parody of a rap song by some of our seniors at college about a missing blue bucket. And that song forms the background score for this video, making this the only original video from us.

Cast : Dileep, Jineesh, Nidhin
Camera : Nidhin, Dileep
Direction : Dileep

2. Pinneyum Palavattom

"You would be good replica for Salim Kumar in this video". When a friend of ours made this casual remark about the original video, he had no idea we would take it seriously. That provided the spark to get us going, and it kept us going until we hit the first bump in the process. We took our sweet time in finishing this video, which has yours truly playing the lead role as a heart broken lover. I still don't know how I was convinced to do the role.

Actors :- cAk, deepz, harisa, sid, shiv
Choreo :- cAk
Editing :- harisa, dileep
Camera, Direction :- dileep

3. In Engg Clg

Unarguably, the best thing we made, especially considering the fact that it had no story, but only a script. What makes it more special to us is that the script was made by our in house genius, Dileep in under two days.  Set to the tune of a popular 90s song, we played out on screen most of the stuff that we did at college. It was great fun filming it, and we have heard wonderful reviews saying it was a joy to watch too.

Actors :- cAk, deepz, harisa, sid, shiv, ponni
Editing :- harisa, dileep
Script, Camera, Direction :- dileep

4. Sagar Aliyan's Suppli

When Shivan lost his only paper in his entire Btech degree, I made a promise to him that we would make a video about it if he got through it. With our main director, Dileep waiting to get in front of the camera, I was provided with a chance to wield the director's sword for this short video. Set to a tune from a movie, which was chosen just cos it had awesome beats, this video reveals how a guy goes through a failed university exam and comes back stronger in the end.

Concept :- hArisa, shiv
Actors :- shiv, dileep, cAk, deepz, ponni, sid
Script, Camera, Editing, Direction :- hArisa

5. His days

They say you should go out with a bang. Even though we knew as much that this was our last video, we decided to do things differently and went our without even a whimper. And it baffles me as to what that happened. This was our more technically brilliant, well thought out work. And it was about football. We made it to release in tandem with the FIFA World Cup 2010. Still under 1k views though.

Actors :- cAk, deepz, harisa, sid, shiv, ponni, dileep
Editing :- dileep
Story :- cAk
Script, Camera, Direction :- dileep




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EPILOGUE

After an year from "His Days" we thought of doing a reunion special. A video with original audio and a solid script. But we fell at the first hurdle. The seven of us were spread across the length and breadth of the country, we still are (with one in Malaysia). We have realized that what we did was supposed to be done in that specific time period - in college, with close friends, as a pass time. It's all out of reach now. But the fact that we did it then will make us feel proud till the end of time.

PIRATES FOR EVER

(From L-R) Chaithin aka cAk, Deepak aka deepz, Shivan aka shiv, Harisankar aka hArisa, Siddharth aka sidd, Dileep aka dileep, Arun aka Ponni

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Well, that's all for this week.

Hope you have a great weekend. Meet you in the comment sections, if you are interested.

'til next week.