Insignia

Insignia, Burning Red

A symbol I created and plan to adopt.

Dinky-Little Bikes, Hippies and Rastas, Scubadiving and more...

Vasco Da Gama
Sat on a llama
And went to the drama
Without his pajama
Hai Rama! Hai Rama!

Thats a little nonsensical rhyme we made up while chilling at Sam's Beach Shack. Very cute place. Nice dinner, soft beats in the background, warm sand and the ocean nearby. Aaah. Goa is Bliss.

A Blue Heaven

While there, we socialised with a Hippie (who worshipped Lord Shiva. Or Sheeva, as he would say), a Rasta (Rastafarians are *really* cool!), and three lesbian chicks! We hung out at beaches, drunk petrol ('twas cashew fenney actually, but it sure smells close enough to petrol! I'm dead sure that should you ever run out of petrol in Goa, just head to a beach shack and dump some fenny in the fuel tank. It WILL work.) Cashew Fenney is a Goan speciality. It's available at every one of the thousand beach shacks. We Chilled on beaches, had INFI INFI ossom food. Partied out the nights. Didn't visit Club Cabana. (We had waaay more fun than Club Cabana)

Chilling...

Also we had vowed to drink more beer than water on the trip... and we ripped up and down the streets of Goa on dinkly little bikes. We went to a Anajuna Beach. We got caught by cops. (Not on the same night, luckily)

We (Avi, KP and I) also got to hang out with bunch of really cool guys - Priyo, Tushar, et al. And they introduced us to our first pints of Kings beer. I kid you not - Goa runs on Kings beer! Forget Kingfisher - drink Kings beer!

Coral reefs. Scubadiving. Wow. Amazing. Wish I'd been able to go down deeper, but it was amazing nevertheless. Jet-skis. For 15 minutes - just the waves and you flying all over the place. Truly Exhilarating!... And the sandwich! Bacon and Ham. Heavenly!

Dinky little bikes!

Man. Now we're gonna need a few days rest to recover from all this serious relaxing!!!

My last end-semester exam in IIT is tomorrow. I'm almost out! :D ... Besides, Endsems have never been so much fun. Goa has never been so much fun! :-/

Scubadiving; Tushaar, Priyo and Avi

Fenny by the Sunset

Fire of the Heart

Remember MA-204. That's when we came across the form
R = 1 + cos(A). The cardioid. Little did I realise then that I could make something so cool using it...

I love fractals. Ever since I came across them some 5-odd years back, I've been obsessed with them. Just the other day, on Terror Candy, I came across Apophysis, a flame fractal generator. (A Flame Fractal is a particular fractal generating technique that uses logarithmic scaling and structural colouring in addition to motion-blurs and anti-aliasing. In short, it looks good.) :)

So, combing fractals and a cardioid, this is what I came up with:


I call it "Fire of the Heart". Jade calls it "Phoenix". Amit thought it was a really cool owl. That's the coolest thing about abstract figures - it is what you think it is. What do you think it is? (leave comment...)

Man. These endsems are turning out to be the coolest endsems of my life!

Landscare

Did you know that in 50 years, world water-levels are expected to rise 10 meters?

That is scary. And plus my island (which I will buy sometime) could well be under water in 50 years!! Damn this global warming.

A concept of what a sunset might look like then. A landscare, if you please. The only ones happier are the Orcas.

The picture links to a 800x450 widescreen photograph. I also have a hi-res 1200x675 version if you want one for a wallpaper :)

Ah, endsems. :-/

Marathon

Everybody's running marathons these days. It's like some sort of "latest fad". Bombay ran a couple of months ago. New York ran one yesterday, and so did Sunita Williams - from the International Space Station, no less.

Endsems have a habit of knocking some nonsense into us. They inspire us to do the oddest of things, and in general, waste a lot of time. What we did yesterday isn't really very odd. It's a very common thing in IIT. But it's something I don't do very often.

Yes, I'm talking about a marathon. Not a *real* marathon: A symbolic one. A movie marathon. We stayed up all night - watching movies. Nothing too odd or anything, just that I needed a pretext to rave about the awesomely cool movies we saw last night. In chronological order (and coincidentally in increasing order of awesomeness):

The Lady in the Water by M. Night Shyamalan is a bizzaro-max movie. It's very strange, yet very simple. Revolving around a bed-time tale involving mythical water-women and strange grassy-wolves that prey on them when they leave their aqueous surroundings, most would consider it a rather bad movie. And so did I - except for this small tinge of confusion.
You see, the movie started with the concept that "man had stopped listening. They were interested in only what appealed to them; and paid no heed to anything else." Avi pointed this out in the middle when I was getting increasingly pissed-off with the movie. And yes - it made sense. Suddenly there was a point to the whole pointlessness.
Plenty of bad acting, a weak script, silly dialogue an rather pointless overall. Yet it carries a message. A very funky message. Start listening.

A Clockwork Orange, adapted from a novel by Anthony Burgess. Psycho. Surreal. Scary. A story about a charismatic delinquent who couldn't resist pretty girls, a bit of ultra-violence and Beethoven's 9th. They go on the rampage every night, beating and raping helpless victims.
And this is where the movie is brilliant. Instead of the usual scary/Jaws-like music playing while hapless old men were beaten and women raped, there was a symphony. All this violence being played out to Beethoven. Beautiful.
Without giving out any further plot details, all I shall say is that the content of the movie is brilliant - in every possible way. And in some ways that aren't even possible. Go watch it. It'll unsettle your mind for days.

V for Vendetta.
Remember, remember
The 5th of November
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot
I know of no reason
Why the 5th of November
Should ever be forgot.

V for Vendetta is one of the most thought out, one of the most amazing movies I have ever seen. The concept, the acting, everything.

The dialogue. Oh the dialogue. More words with V than you've encountered in a lifetime. Very Verbose. I'm merely remarking on the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. Lines that reach into your brain and twirl it around. People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people. Just the political content in the movie deserves applaud.

And after you watch the movie and fall in love with it, read the graphic novel. Your ideas and love for freedom will change. Forever. I just hope that *real* terrorists aren't so charismatic and ferociously skilled in the art of combat and deception.


... And that is what I do during endsems. Watch out for another 3D landscape soon :)

Clouds Race Across the Sky

After failing to draw a rainforest (mentioned "Jungle Scene" from previous post) all night, I was in a generally gloomy mood. Bloody sun-rays-streaming-through-the-leaves wala effect I just couldnt manage to portray X(. "God-Rays" they're called apparently.

So, suddenly the music changed track to Joe Satriani. A nice slow little song called "Clouds race across the sky". That's when I made this scene.

It's actually not just a still - it's a short video. The sun moves up through the sky and loops behind you while the clouds.. well they race across the sky! :) .. Just about to render the movie. Thought I'd put a still up of the scene first :D (Update: Click here for the video. It's only 1.7 MB)

Click to get the full-res bitmap

Yes - this one is in widescreen so I can use it as a desktop wallpaper! Hope you like it. :)

Ah... And now it's time to start on my BTP report. I shall put something more up over the weekend. Bye.

Conclave

Well, this blog's been dead for quite a while now. And that's for a variety of reasons, chief among them being "lack of enthu".

Anyhows, I've started fiddling around with a lot of stuff recently, one of them being 3D art-giri. Here's one of the photo shots I made a couple of days ago. Inspired from "The Protoss Conclave" in Starcraft, it's called "Conclave".

Click for a more detailed picture ;)

I'm thinking that the next N posts are gonna be 3D artwork scenes! Atleast that's better than no posts at all, right? I've been trying to make a "Jungle Scene", without much success though. If that succeeds then I shall post that too :)