Category Archives: General

Items of Interest – 29-Jan-12 to 5-Feb-12

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Like I did some days back, here is a collection of interesting things that I linked to, or tweeted, in the past week.

Tweets and Retweets

  • 5-Feb-12: RT @funnyhumour My superbowl.com site has been getting loads of hits this week. It seems people are finally appreciating the sheer quality of my owl
  • 5-Feb-12: We want a better quality JPG 🙂 RT @MouthTapedShut The Girl with the #DragonTattoo Blu-ray/DVD cover: http://tmblr.co/ZuxP2xFvR_w_ #MOUTHTAPEDSHUT
  • 5-Feb-12: RT @josephradhik @gottabreakfree EPIC!! RT @RobKH: “Guy Pearce in Memento.” “Guy who?” “Guy.” “Who’s there?” “Knock Knock.”
  • 5-Feb-12: Can’t imagine what that would be like! RT @Lozatron_ I am tireder than a tired person who is very tired.
  • 5-Feb-12: RT @mihirfadnavis RT @SethMacFarlane: If you say “an historic”, you’re probably an hasshole.
  • 5-Feb-12: RT @Galactica_gk It’s so much more darker than the Swedish Version. David Fincher is a genius. #TheGirlWithDragonTattooEnglish
  • 4-Feb-12: Expert Mode http://t.co/gjUHQnMM
  • 3-Feb-12: RT @BaggadBilla Guess karo mein kaun hoon? (text from unknown number) me: @AapChutiyeHain
  • 3-Feb-12: RT @R_beccaBlair Life is too short to give your time to rude people. =)
  • 2-Feb-12: RT @atulkasbekar Lol! http://t.co/2wGpQcUN
  • 2-Feb-12: RT @rob_sheridan @jonjensen0 … Unicode 6.1 is out, and it includes this amazing new character: PILE OF POO (U+1F4A9) http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm
  • 2-Feb-12: RT @funnyhumour I’ve recently stopped using products that are tested on animals. My dog hasn’t had a meal in 2 days.
  • 1-Feb-12: Angel Heart – Atmospheric, dark and creepy horror/thriller. Mickey Rourke and De Niro are excellent. 8/10
  • 1-Feb-12: RT @funnyoneliners @the_moonface Me: I’d like to report a disturbance. Police Dispatcher: Okay, where sir Me: In the force, I can feel it.
  • 1-Feb-12: Nice review… RT @Galactica_gk Män Som Hatar Kvinnor http://t.co/YprUN9EF
  • 1-Feb-12: Total Carnage http://t.co/fC0UoYkw
  • 1-Feb-12: RT @RGVzoomin “@sirasri: its not the dips u take, its the depth which counts.. Its not the steps u climb, its the height which matters.”
  • 1-Feb-12: RT @designersays RT @VerifiedDrunk: I wouldn’t make a very good doctor cause I don’t give a fuck how you feel.
  • 1-Feb-12: RT @funnyoneliners 10 times out of 9, you’ll find me exaggerating about something. RT @clarkekant
  • 1-Feb-12: “A Room Filled with an Obnoxious Amount of Money” http://t.co/tdR1OLsw
  • 31-Jan-12: RT @funnyoneliners Sure you can follow your heart… just don’t forget to take your brain with you. RT @newfylover1
  • 31-Jan-12: Agreed 100%, Creamstone = Joy of Ice Cream RT @vemana Creamstone ice cream has been had. Joy of ice cream has been rediscovered.
  • 31-Jan-12: RT @HaaaNaaahh RT @funnyorfact #WeAllHaveThat one song in our playlist which we always skip, but never delete.
  • 31-Jan-12: RT @RGVzoomin “@Praveenraj_: We all damn well know that the whole world’s a stage, but none of us have a fucking idea what the script is?.”
  • 30-Jan-12: Awesome poster! RT @ResidentEvil Evil Goes Global. Fall 2012. #ResidentEvil http://t.co/p7eJpqgt
  • 30-Jan-12: Atari and Gaming History http://t.co/XcOnai54
  • 30-Jan-12: RT @zombeaner David Fincher Refuses to Cut ‘Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,’ India Release Canceled http://t.co/Du4oBlO3
  • 30-Jan-12: A nice hot cup of tea at the right moment (when you feel you need it the most) = heaven.
  • 30-Jan-12: RT @josephradhik RT @Koquettish: He asked her to unzip. She downloaded winRAR. #AwkwardErotica
  • 29-Jan-12: Before Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’ In the Hall of the Mountain King from “The Social Network”, there’s another version I used to listen to.
  • 29-Jan-12: That is “In the Hall of the Mountain Thing” by Mark Anthony Klem. I have a MIDI file of it along with some of his Doom music.
  • 29-Jan-12: I am not able to find a proper link / download of it now, to link & share. I don’t know whether I should upload the MIDI file that I have.
  • 29-Jan-12: That MIDI file of Mark Klem’s “In the Hall of the Mountain Thing” I have is a whopping 11 KB in size and was downloaded on 26-Apr-01.
  • 29-Jan-12: Nice! RT @rajturl Didn’t know @ankash1009 had something to do with Talaash, ‘additional dialogues’. It makes it even more awesome …
  • 28-Jan-12: And a couple of days back, I registered the domain KarthikAbhiram.com. Right now it just points to Karthik82.com.

Other Links

  • Timehop – Timehop is a neat web-based application that integrates with your social networking accounts (I linked it to my Facebook and Twitter accounts), pulls past updates from them, and sends you an email on what you did a year ago.  For example a year ago, I posted this on Facebook.
  • Lee Bermejo’s Rorschach – They are apparently doing a set of Watchmen prequels with some big names attached to the project.  This is Lee Bermejo’s cover for Rorschach, and the story is written by Brian Azzarello.
  • Image Quality Comparison – Nokia N8, iPhone, Samsung Galaxy SII – Interesting comparison of the cameras on these smartphones.  According to that page, the N8 is the winner (yay!).
  • Ultraviolet FAQ – No, not the Milla Jovovich movie, Ultraviolet is a system of electronic media distribution, kind of like a non-physical DVD/Bluray.  I looked this up since the recently-revealed cover artwork for the Bluray release of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo mentions Ultraviolet and I didn’t know what that was.
  • India’s Incredibly Cool Hand-Drawn Movie Posters – These are awesome!  Done by a Bangalore-based artist.
  • Two wonderful pieces of art from deviantART – A Study in Paper by ~ldhenson and Television by ~boo21190.
  • Star Wars Rock Out – I was looking for a trope to mention in my Chronicle review post, and came across this.
  • Kevin Smith on Superman – An old one, but worth re-sharing.  A 20 minute excerpt from one of Kevin Smith’s shows, where he talks about his interaction with producer Jon Peters when he was given the chance to work on a Superman script.  Very funny.
  • Sherlock Holmes – Discombobulate Music Video – Amazing video!  I didn’t know this existed till my friend Kartheek told me about it.
  • Observer Series – My cousin Girish and I are big fans of the show Fringe.  He’s been posting about references to “Observers” in his school notes and various other places.  Four posts so far – One, Two, Three, Four.

Speaking of my cousin, his blog Galactica will be on hiatus for about a month.  I was mentioning that this is like a break between two seasons of a TV show.  This led to us creating posters advertising Season 2 of his blog.  This poster by him has got to be the best one of the lot –

I thought this was a very clever piece of work.  The design and text recalls the poster of The Social Network, and the background is from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Two David Fincher references in one poster?  Class!  Click the image above to see more of the posters – one more by him and one simple poster by me.

On Saturday evening, I attended Pecha Kucha Night Hyderabad Vol 7, which I will write about in detail in a separate post.

Items of Interest (Jan 2012 Recap)

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Apart from the collection of tweets in the earlier post, here are some more interesting things that I posted online this month.  Archived for posterity.

First off, this is my official 2012 New Year Card:

2012 New Year Card by KarthikEven if the world is going to end on 21-Dec-12, we’ll still get to see these movies before that: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (which unfortunately may not get released in India after all), Prometheus (8-Jun-12), The Dark Knight Rises (20-Jul-12) and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (14-Dec-12).

As I’d mentioned in my collection of tweets post, I bought a Canon Speedlite 580 EX II flash for my camera.  This is, as I later found out, one of Canon’s top-of-the-line external flashes.  I still have to learn to use it to its full potential.

Canon Speedlite FlashI’d remarked that when attached to my camera, it’s quite bulky and makes my Canon EOS 550D look positively small!  In fact, if one was to add a bigger telephoto lens to it, it would be heavy enough to do bicep exercises with.  So I took a photo of that.

I later posted larger resolution versions of two of the drawings in the New Year Card above.  Here they are:

The Dark Knight Rises - Drawing by Karthik AbhiramThat’s a stippled drawing of Batman holding what appears to be an EMP Gun from The Dark Knight Rises.  The drawing was done based on a screenshot from the HD trailer.  The text is the chant you hear in the trailer.

And here’s Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander from David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo:

Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander - Drawing by Karthik AbhiramI decided to use the original Swedish title instead of the English one.  I love the posters and the artwork for the movie.  From what I read, the publicity materials are designed by Kellerhouse Design and the photography is by Jean-Baptiste Mondino.

Another interesting thing:

Businessman - CBFC CertificateThese days, I’ve observed that at Prasad’s Multiplex, for Hindi and Telugu movies, they post the censor certificate for the movie as approved by the Central Board of Film Certification.  The front part of the certificate is what you see attached to the film itself, but they’re even putting up the reverse side of the certificate these days.  Apparently, if there’s a triangle stamped on the certificate, it means that there are cuts made (these things I found out thanks to a friend).

Above is a quick photo I took of the certificate for the Mahesh Babu movie Businessman.  The list of cuts is pretty interesting.  If you want to know what all dirty stuff you are missing, all you have to do is read the list of cuts!

I found this description very funny (“Delete the visuals: close exposure of cleavage”, “finger of hero moving on the chest and hip of heroine”, “Mute the words: …, lanja kodaka, fucking, …”), that’s why I took a photo of it to preserve the memory!  One friend commented that this description is actually more sleazy than what it would have been if this stuff ended up in the movie.

While there may be a rationale to certifying movies, I still can’t understand why cuts are required in a movie that’s anyway rated “A” or “Adults Only”.

Some other videos and trailers of interest:

  • i2 (i square) Promo – i2 is an upcoming short film from Nakama Creations and Planet Green Pictures (the filmmakers behind the massively popular short film Shadow).  The trailer totally wowed me, the music (Prakash Anantha) and cinematography (Surya Vinay) are awesome.  It looks like a movie made for the big screen.
  • Theme from A Fistful of Dollars by Ennio Morricone – Watch the video and then tell me, does that tune sound familiar?  If you recently saw the Mahesh Babu movie Businessman, then it will.  That’s the theme music associated with Kajal Agarwal’s character.  I’ve not seen A Fistful of Dollars, but when watching Businessman, I recognised the theme right away as being from a Clint Eastwood movie – because I had a desktop theme (remember those things from several years ago?) with these sounds.
  • Comparison Video from the Manos in HD Project – Manos: The Hands of Fate is a 1966 movie directed by Hal Warren.  This is known as one of the worst movies ever made.  Someone has discovered a pristine print of this movie and are painstakingly restoring it by scanning the film at 2k resolution.  I’ve actually seen this movie and would love to watch it in that beautiful HD transfer at some point of time.  The page that I followed to get to this video link rightly says: “The Manos In HD film restoration project is one of the most important things going on in the world today. Never before has such a fucking disaster looked so beautiful!”
  • Talaash Trailer – A psychological thriller starring Aamir Khan.  Looking forward to it!  Releases in June.
  • Kahaani Trailer – Another thriller starring Vidya Balan.  Looks good.  The trailer kind of reminded me of Anurag Kashyap’s That Girl in Yellow Boots.  This movie releases in March.
  • Agent Vinod Trailer – Action / spy movie starring Saif Ali Khan.  It’s written and directed by Sriram Raghavan who made Johnny Gaddaar, so should be good.  Also a March release.
  • Jeremy Keith – All our Yesterdays – This is a 45-minute video but an interesting talk on preserving our memories, comparing the longevity of digital data to analog (info engraved on a stone tablet can last, and can be read after hundreds or thousands of years, can the same be said of digital data on a DVD?).

This month, we had a few events at office, for which I acted as a photographer.  For two of the events, you can see the photos I took on these Facebook albums:

The first album consists of photos entirely shot with my Nokia N8 phone camera – which does surprisingly well in good light.  The second one though was taken with my Canon EOS 550D camera (I got permission to bring the camera and two additional lenses).  I got a lot of good feedback on these photos.

Flower among Leaves - Photo by Karthik AbhiramThis is one of the photos that resulted from that set.  Taken with my 550D with the 50mm f1.8 II lens.  You can download the full-size image and peek into the EXIF info if you wish.

Collection of Tweets – end Dec-11 till today

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This is a collection of tweets from me and others that I retweeted, between 30-Dec-11 and today.  I thought I’d post these on a regular basis to archive these links.  The below set essentially recaps the important stuff that I posted or shared this month.

  • 28-Jan-12: #NowDownloading Romero’s Night of the Living Dead 1968 in 720p HD – http://t.co/UTyI9Qn6 – MP4 file is 1 GB in size. 1080p is also there.
  • 28-Jan-12: Twitter’s Awful But Amazing Recruitment Video [Video] http://t.co/gg42Ad4b
  • 28-Jan-12: If you run a self-hosted WordPress blog, search for and install the Jetpack plugin – http://jetpack.me – it enables advanced plugins.
  • 28-Jan-12: MOVIE REVIEW: Josh Trank’s Chronicle (2012) http://t.co/rcCQRMig
  • 27-Jan-12: Agneepath – Acting was good, especially Hrithik’s. But I felt it was too long and had too much exaggerated drama. 6/10
  • 26-Jan-12: Famous Photographers With Their Even More Famous Photographs [Photography] http://t.co/Jj6HClur
  • 26-Jan-12: Is This the Canon 5D Mark III? [Cameras] http://t.co/C8ZZD9yl
  • 26-Jan-12: RT @Galactica_gk The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo not releasing in India as David Fincher isn’t willing to cut 3 scenes in the movie.
  • 24-Jan-12: You should get married soon. Or else.. http://t.co/AnEZEzj1
  • 22-Jan-12: Underworld: Awakening 3D – Decent & good looking movie with stylish action scenes. Fun while it lasts but you won’t remember it later. 7/10
  • 22-Jan-12: Drawing face-off between @justkalpana and her son: the results: http://pic.twitter.com/oWzIbGDU (mommy) and http://pic.twitter.com/ngziMePf (son)
  • 21-Jan-12: “‘The Raid’ features some of the bloodiest, impressive, and most inventive action sequences in recent memory” – http://www.movieline.com/2012/01/20/sundance-everything-youve-heard-about-indonesion-actioner-the-raid-is-true/
  • 21-Jan-12: RT @OfficialBrookeT Life is too short to be sitting around talking about how short life is. (:
  • 20-Jan-12: Just bought “The Illuminator: Access To Universal Intelligence by Rajith Rajappan” from @flipkart http://t.co/HqvibO7Q
  • 19-Jan-12: RT @Galactica_gk Really America?? Really? RT @denofgeek CBS orders contemporary Sherlock Holmes show http://t.co/pOrydLzU
  • 19-Jan-12: Sad news if this is so… AICN: Are We Getting A PG-13 EXPENDABLES 2? http://bit.ly/xFBc6C
  • 18-Jan-12: RT @mihirfadnavis I like Len Wiseman – Die Hard 4 was great. But the Total Recall remake looks like it won’t last.. *puts on sunglasses* #TwoWeeks. *YEAAAAA*
  • 17-Jan-12: Five directors and their questionable filmmaking techniques http://t.co/BM4DSkjb
  • 17-Jan-12: What makes Prince Of Persia so enduringly popular? http://bit.ly/xoO43g Pls note @psam @rajturl
  • 17-Jan-12: Businessman – Loved it! Mahesh Babu carried the movie with his tremendous attitude, storyline kept one interested & music was good. 8/10
  • 14-Jan-12: Lee Bermejo – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo http://t.co/BgWq1irg
  • 14-Jan-12: RT @GDBALA Exclusive: Quentin Tarantino’s favorite films of 2011 & more! http://t.co/2nAn9Wbs
  • 13-Jan-12: Journey – Two love stories told as flashbacks, in the context of an accident. Very nicely done. I watched the Telugu dubbed version. 8/10
  • 12-Jan-12: RT @RGVzoomin Extreme heights of craze for Business man..Mahesh babu himself is not getting tickets!
  • 12-Jan-12: Attn @rajturl @psam RT @mihirfadnavis If you used to dig Baba Sehgal and are feeling nostalgic, here – http://t.co/rR5dOiW5
  • 11-Jan-12: Extended cut? RT @FarOutAkhtar Off to the gym now and then to do background music for Don 2 additional scenes to be incorporated in the DVD.
  • 10-Jan-12: RT @gurpreet_bhatia @AshuMittal Photographers are violent people. First they frame you, then they shoot you, then they hang you on the wall.
  • 10-Jan-12: RT @krishashok Me: have you heard this new Harris Jeyaraj song? @hariflute: No. Me: yes, you have heard it before
  • 10-Jan-12: RT @krishashok The @hariflute – “Tamil physicist to waiter: There’s an MC-squared in my soup”
  • 8-Jan-12: If I attach my new flash on my camera, and put a telephoto lens on it, I can do bicep exercises with it.
  • 8-Jan-12: I bought a Canon Speedlite 580 EX II flash today. The flash looks big compared to my diminutive EOS 550D 🙂
  • 7-Jan-12: RT @mihirfadnavis I didn’t dig ‘Tinker Tailor’ because it was a cool old fashioned spy tale. I dug it cos it had Sherlock Holmes punching Bane in the face.
  • 7-Jan-12: IMO – The Darkest Hour > Skyline > AVP: R 🙂
  • 7-Jan-12: The Darkest Hour – An effortless watch if you switch off your brain. To it’s credit was never boring. Dialogues unintentionally funny! 7/10
  • 7-Jan-12: RT @mihirfadnavis #IamSoMiddleClass I go to Landmark but avoid the DVD/BluRay section, so I can buy the Moserbaer 40 rupees 3-in-one VCDs.
  • 7-Jan-12: “Hello Amanda. Tum mujhe nahin jaanti ho. Par main tumhe acchi tarah se jaanta hoon. Main ek game khelna chaahtha hoon.” – SAW Hindi dub 🙂
  • 6-Jan-12: RT @io9 An Exclusive Look at the Making of Dragon Tattoo’s Stunning Titles http://io9.com/5873372/
  • 5-Jan-12: RT @Violent_Gandhi_ @Chiken_chameli ‘SHERLOCK HOLMES’ is a Poor Mans ‘ACP PRADYUMAN’… . 🙂
  • 5-Jan-12: Great poem in the beginning… Geekolinks: 1/4 http://t.co/YKyUUcju
  • 4-Jan-12: RT @purisubzi A tome, if there ever was one, on Roboto – the font used in Android 4. http://bit.ly/y8Mdum #TypeNerdsOnly
  • 4-Jan-12: 70 Science Fiction and Fantasy Movies to Watch Out for in 2012 [Io9 2012 Preview] http://bit.ly/A7cWOu
  • 3-Jan-12: RT @zombeaner If youre havin girl problems i feel bad for you son/It took me under 12 parsecs to make the Kessel Run – Han Goin’ Solo
  • 1-Jan-12: Mihir Fadnavis – The 35 Most Anticipated Movies of 2012 http://t.co/3D9l8xwQ
  • 1-Jan-12: What do colorblind people see? [Biology] http://t.co/KfM03x2Q
  • 1-Jan-12: RT @clientsfh “How many SEO experts do you need to change a lightbulb lightbulbs buy light bulbs neon lights sex porn” http://t.co/DwaaxtwA
  • 31-Dec-11: Alien trailer, Prometheus style http://t.co/Vm4gOHAD
  • 30-Dec-11: RT @josephradhik RT @sickipediabot: What do you get if you cross a left leg with a right leg? A squashed bollock.