YuviSense: Codin Kid

Crowding over a Jailbroken iPhone - the thing is famous over here. The people in the colored dresses are our Teachers - the best ones in our school This is the second iPhone I am physically seeing, and it belongs to a student here(the leftmost guy on the top-right pic). This one was brought for 30k Rupees, which is approximately $750! A tad too much for an 8 gig model, don’t you think? The first one I saw belonged to Prabhu, one of the organizers of pipesCamp

Imposing, by YuviPanda.

I love perspective

This is Yusuf whose mother changed his name to Abdul Quadir since she thought having your name at the last of the Roll is not good Fantastic guy to hang out with, and draws like a the-guy-who-is-great-at-drawing-stuff.

These are some of the images taken during after-school hours while practicing for Teacher’s Day Dance (don’t worry, I’m not being cruel to the world by participating). About 75 usable images out of around 150 total images. I should really be getting a better ratio…

And, these images aren’t on Zooomr: They’re on Flickr. Yes, I’ve switched to Flickr from Zooomr. And, moving away actually made me feel guilty, which talks mountains of Thomas Hawk’s Marketing

So, why did I switch? I stuck with Zooomr through a lot of trouble, even when it was offline for a long time. But,

• There’s no API
• Which means no good Uploading Tools (last time I checked, jUploadr can’t hold a candle to Flickr Uploader)
• Slow. Slow enough for my friends to complain.
• Did I mention slow?
• No manually tweakable sets.
• Not many people have Zooomr accounts = Not many people can comment
• I didn’t feel it till now, but having something like Organizer on Flickr beats beating around for organizing.
• Small Community. It’s a Very Tightly Bond Community(believe me, the passion on the chatrooms run high), but small.

Things that would have made me stick with (evangelizing and using) Zooomr?

• Better Tool support. Kris made a fantastic move towards this by making the Zooomr API compatible with the Flickr API, which means Tools just have to change a few configurable strings and boom! It supports Zooomr! But, the API is far from complete now, which sucks.
• Make it fast. Much easier said than done.
• Add manually modifiable sets. Smartsets are cool, but, sometimes, I want to just remove a single photo from a set.
• Allow a bigger userbase to comment. Comments moderated by the user? I still have this gripe with Flickr, but atleast a lot more people have Yahoo accounts.
• Allow Flickr as a mode of authentication. As Zooomr now has OpenID and Email auth, adding Flickr as a mode of authentication shouldn’t be hard. And, it means that the thousands of flickr users immediately become Zooomr users as well. Easier said than done, as Flickr is demanding a full API implementaiton on Zooomr’s part before it will give it an API key.

However, these are suggestions by an idiotic, stupid, inexperienced, schizoprenic, epileptic kid (that’s me), so it may or may not be a good thing for Zooomr. But, I wouldn’t have left if these were there. My POV.

So, Bye Zooomr, Hi Flickr, Sorry Thomas. I owe my photography to you, Thomas: I think I have improved a quadrogazillion times in my photography since I’ve talked to you, so you could guess my level before he talked to me. Someday, I aspire to him. And, if I’m able to get the resources (server, bandwidth, Windows, etc), the first thing I’d do is to write a service that’ll *mirror* your photos on Flickr so that I can enjoy them at full speed (yes, Zooomr’s speed is that bad, especially at my place. I know that this partially has to do with my location as well as  my connection, but Flickr isn’t slow)

I’m trying to post the best of the 22,000 unbackuped photos that have accumulated in my ageing hard drive (hope it doesn’t crash), and it’s proving to be quite a task. I’ve got about a 100 up so far, and hope to post process (I do that a lot, improves photos a LOT (Thanks Thomas for showin me that!)) and post atleast 50 photos a day.

So, cya at http://flickr.com/yuvi!

Sad and Confused, by YuviPanda.

How I am feeling now. Divorce (as most things) seems very impersonal and matter-of-fact when it doesn’t happen to us. But when you feel it happen to someone who is almost like a sister to you, it takes a whole new dimension. It hurts. A lot. Sigh.

Perhaps you have gone through this hell. Perhaps you know someone else who has undergone that hell. She is only 14 years old. Her parents are getting divorced. I don’t even know what to say: I feel really out of depth. But, perhaps, you do know what to say. If you do, please please please email me(yuvipanda@gmail.com) or drop it in the comments. I’ll pass it on to her. You’ll be doing someone a very big favor.

And girl, I know you’ll be reading this. Remember, there are boatloads of people to be with you. Remember.

Hookin me up, by YuviPanda.

This one, taken with my cousin’s cam a looong time ago, was THE image that got me hooked on to photography. I wasn’t into flickr/zooomr then, and it was the fact that I could create images like this (which looked stunning to me at that time) that got me interested in photography. Just found this while trying to catalog my shots (a losing battle)

I am thinking of switching to Flickr from Zooomr, the only factor in the way now being cost. More on the reasons later.

Oh, and in other news, Rory Blyth just commented on my blog! I’m so high that I need an entire chemistry period just to compose a response! I’ll post that soon as well!

This is one of the shots, though containing many glaring technical faults in hindsight, keeps me coming back for more. This was one of the first Supermacros I took, and I think the first one of a flower.

I feel kinda, uhm, well, left out. I discovered this post about this disease called NADD which is exactly what I am suffering from! I can’t study unless some Music (usually Tamil) is playing. My next stop is while commuting in a close share auto with 13 other noisy people. It was written four years ago, at around the same time I “discovered” VB6. The times when you could come back from school and just code….. [sigh]

This photograph has nothing to do with the iPhone. It was done before I discovered post-processing. The guy on the left is Peter Joseph. A nice guy. Plays basketball really nicely. Runs like hell. Fantastic athlete. Could dance if he has to. Good enough on the academic side of things. And, do you know what he was talking to me about yesterday? The iPhone. And the thing isn’t even launching here yet(And even if it did, it won’t quite sell that well due to the cost and the battery life(But it would sell like hotcakes (or panipuris, if you prefer (I just had some on the way out from school. delicious) if it had these features(are you listening, Steve?)))

I think I’m getting better at this.

Click through for a better view.

Steve Clayton of Blue Monster fame dropped by on my Engadget Analysis post (Which is cool ‘coz I’ve been in love with the Blue Monster ever since I saw it and it’s there in my Sidebar) and offered to gift me a copy of Office ‘07 (Thanks Steve!). After a really stressed out first day at school (they just increased school hours from 7 to 8:(), I came home fully expecting to crash. And here comes my Mom and tells me that there’s a package for me! Crash averted

Dad had already rummaged through it, and I found a Blue Monster T-Shirt (yaay!), a fantastically shaped box that is Office ‘07 and two Blue Monster cards of Steve Clayton, one signed. In order of coolness * size. Thanks Steve!

Here’re some shots of the package. The DOF goodness thanks to Thomas. More found at this set here on Zooomr.:

The last one is the teeth of the Blue Monster, and no, the Microsoft logo on the Office Box didn’t look like the one shown in the top (It was a quick Photoshop job). The real logo looked like this:

So, Thanks Steve for the swag, and Thanks Hugh for the Blue Monster. I’ll probably wear the Blue Monster Tee first time for something cool, like, say, Proto.in (the DEMO of India)?

P.S. Some more interesting shots. Interesting ‘coz, it’s a DVD, and I don’t have a DVD drive

How can I make copies if I can’t read it?

P.P.S: One more thanks to Steve Clayton and Hugh. We’ll change the world!

Yay!

Here’s a photo I’ve been wanting to upload for a while:

Thanks people! I’m feeling like I launched something

a Little bIt of heAven.., by mR.bLind43>.

Zooomr Mark III has been running into walls again and again. They’ve been down for almost a week now. But, I’ll be with them. When Thomas Hawk can take a second mortage on his house so that I can share/upload photos for free, what more can I do but wait with hope?

I Think Flickr Just Sent us some Pizzas!, by Kristopher Tate.

Cool! Kristopher was working for 3 days straight without any sleep, and he got this from flickr. Thomas Hawk ate most of it though (Atleast, I saw him eat some of it, and Kris was sleeping at that time, so I ignorantly assume that Thomas ate most of it. Like I said, all people, including me, are retarted)

DOTS Karthick Wink Hosted on Zooomr

Hostage Hosted on Zooomr

Hostage #2 Hosted on Zooomr

I’m still amazed at what a few filters and adjustments can do to an otherwise thoroughly boring photograph. Thanks Thomas!

[Disclaimer: No Karthiks were hurt during the making of these photographs. Except the small bruises, that is]

New Mommies Hosted on Zooomr

Found in a billboard near my school, I thought I might send this to Maryam. And the gazillion other people who would, at some point in time, get to be New Mothers. Queer, how you can’t be one of ‘em even if you want to.