a new one. instablogs

i came across instablogs.com today, was looking at the blogging formats employeed and i thought to my self, maybe this instead of struggling with moving everthing i own in the blogsphere to here. and then i read the splash page on instablog.org and i says it is by invite.

Dammmmmm!

well ladies and gentlemen, can i invite myself in?

Technorati Tags: instablogs, uninvited

for the birdies amongst us

there is an exciting race which is scheduled on january 22nd 2006 in mumbai, the HSBC Mumbai Bird Race. this is the second time the event is being organised in mumbai. and seems to have become an annual event.

last time there were about 277 species of birds spotted ! bravo birders!.

where to get more info on this? click here "HSBC Mumbai Bird Race"

Technorati Tags: Birding, BirdRace, Mumbai

Turking

Complete simple tasks that people do better than computers. And, get paid for it. Choose from thousands of tasks, control when you work, and decide how much you earn.

this statement was what caught my eye.

i have taken the definition of "turking" from blogshares.com , you can find a list of blog/blogger who are writting about "turking" here

Definition:
Turking is an act of accomplishing Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) on
Amazon Mechanical Turk. Workers are paid for the numbers of HITs they
accomplish. Since the Nov. 2005 launch of Amazon Mechanical Turk,
turking has become a popular online activity for many college students
and computer enthusiasts.

a very interesting concept. i can see the future were in lot of people would get involved into turking. the profile of people currently seem to be like the definition college students and "geeks"(?!).

i can see a future were in there would be new companies formed, whose main source of income would be from turking. would they be looking at outsourcing this activity to people who are looking for work? possibly the companies formed would hire infrastructure, possibly high bandwidth, have remote access servers to which hundreds of college students and techno-managers with spare time would be connecting to handle HIT's.


why do i think companies would be get into this business?


one simple fact, currently there is a process of qualification based on which a HIT is assigned to a person, the companies would have a higher turn around time in archiving and building on this qualification requirement. (by the way i had qualified to handle a few hits, and the first one i took was for a man who wanted to decide if he looked good with a beard or without a beard, in case this is accepted i guess i will be richer by $0.01)


i guess more qualified you/entity are, more HIT's will be assigned to you.


for an organization, this would be one continuous stream of HIT's


will pen more on this latter. but one this is sure, this is one definite activity which will be on peoples radar for some time. this could turn out to be as popular as RAP music.

Technorati Tags: Turking, Amazon

trying the performancings blog this page

I was just waiting for something like this. I guess it should be soon available in india.

Boing Boing: Kill-A-Watt electrical usage meter

Technorati Tags: firefox, extentions, performancing

on the roll

i have not blogged so much in one day as i have done today. and i started blogging in november 2004.

i guess this is because of the convenience of PerFormancing extension for firefox.

viva la PerFormancing

Test post using Performancing for firefox 1.5

This is just a test post to check out how performancing for firefox 1.5 works....looks good so far!

update 29th dec 2005.

still getting used to this interface, looks extremely powerful and convenient to use. maybe i can get to figure out how to connect to blogzy.com blog and transfer my content from blogger to blogzy.

why am i looking at moving to blogzy? one simple reason, categories which blogger does not seem to have and the work around's seem to be involve lot of work. currently i am maintaining a number of individual blogs just because i want to categories the contents in a particular way.

i have been working with firefox for quite sometime now, i am a FAN.

the firefox extensions are amazing. performancing for firefox is great and you can find it here at

Performancing

Technorati Tags: Performancing, firefox, blogginginterface

On photography and people

not sure what exactly that i want to post. i have been working on 2 ideas for my normal humor/sci-fi writing, have been cooking this for about 10-15 days not much progress.

i seem to have got over the craze of playing blogshares.com. and this is giving me some time. i still log in every now and then. after about 10 months on this wonderful game, i am getting back to photography, and you guessed it....blogging.

(just a footnote in the history of blogshares, i had reached the 20th richest player about a month back. and now since the market crash i have been pushed down to what? 30? 36? place, the new turks are on the rampage give the old rich players a run for their money)
today i was browsing through the forum at jjmehta.com

and it was wonderful to see all the great photographers and their photos.

and posted one which i was working on...using a br-2a and a 50 mm nikkor reversed on a d70.

came across a guy going by the nic of "The Rider" and he reminded me of abijeet, the one whose blog is linked to the right of this post. Going through his blog i got a link to his wifes blog, and man i was crying after seeing the posts there...she was talking of walking around on brigade road and other great places in bangalore. and this is Priti's blog

i guess i am really missing bangalore.(or bengaloore or whatever they want to change the name to) wonder if Pecos pub is still around,they had a gobi manchurian which was absolutly out of the world, never had it so good anywhere else. dry and crisp went wonderfull with the beer.

Indian, the burger joint on st.patricks complex, "stars and stripes" in the same complex, the man running the place used to make apple pie once in a while and it was mind blowing, i was lucky couple of times when i was there(before marriage) that i got to eat this pie.

fanoos kebab rolls, his beef masala and roti was wonderful, the wet spots you see on these pages are my saliva....drool droooool.

there was this tiny mallu joint somewhere at the back of wilson garden, the food was real cheap, and quantity was big and quality was wonderful. hygine forget it! i think this place was called "Saigo"

enough about the food and bangalore( watch out bangalore i should be visiting soon!!)

i am still trying to figure out photoediting, it is slightly more than a year since i had picked up the d-70, still figuring out monitor caliberation. i have a feeling that this time i will be getting a hang of it.

had a wonderful day, this christmas, had a few friends home over, gala time, no booze, only veg food and also some jain food going around!! in the evening was invited by kumar to view the puja for the pilgrims who are heading for shabrimalai. kumar was one of the participant in the event.

and the event? fire walking! for those who have been looking at my photoblog, they would remember photos of a similar event 25th december 2005.

will post the photos soon.

guess that's it for now.

Technorati Tags: bangalore, food, memories

Himalaya pictures

i was trawling the net and i came across a post on ramesh dhami! on a blog. have given the link here On the Edge - René Seifert's Insights: Exhibition in Bangalore: Himalaya Pictures

having seen a few of dhami's pictures, this must have been an absolute fantastic show.(not this shows one)

i guess this is one more reason why i need to look at bangalore! missing out on a lot of stuff there.

on the other side, life if real interesting in mumbai. from a different point of view, i have met lot of amazing people from tania's school. the parents, the teachers(didi's) a great man called Manoj Lekhi, a person who is sooooo active in ISP and SSY and the school.

all such high energy people. so charged.

keeping in touch

Posting here after a long time. This is just to let blogger know that i am still around. I have been totally bogged down with work and personal commitments.

In the last few months i have spent quite some time travelling, have been to ooty,coonor, mudhumalai, mysore,ganapatipule,cochin. these are some of the places i can recollect off hand.

I have become an uncle to a beautiful little girl.

my daughter has been awarded the yellow belt in karate, she is 4 years old!

work has been continiously interesting. the chinese curse which goes "may you live in interesting times"

i have been spending quite some time in photography. also thinking of taking up a formal course in photography.

have started working on macro photography(or photo micrography as it is known) have posted a sample of a dead fly i found in the house at http://pvvpics.blogspot.com

i have not picked up a macro lense. i am doing macro photography using a lense reversal ring, br-2a for nikon, reversing a 50mm 1.8 lense onto a d70.

a few rounds of this has convinced me to start saving for a macro lense. he he.

with a br-2a all metering and auto features of d70 disappears and it becomes a manual camera!

till the macro lense comes in guess it is nikons br-2a to the rescue.

I have been regularly posting images here