Mostly Pointless » Activities

Because every picture has a story to tell

Kokonad — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:57:32 +0000

A fresh Hi to all my readers! It’s been a long long LONG time since I have posted. And that’s because I have been insanely busy with work – I apologize. But on another side, from the limited free time I have, I still have been pursuing my photography and photoblogging. I recently revamped the entire website, giving it a facelift… what you girls call “a makeover”, and we guys call “a shower.”

I have started adopting a motif for my photos – every picture has a story to tell. I have done this only for the last few photos of the total 60-odd, but it is something I would like to pursue. This is the address to my photoblog:

The Matte Finish Photoblog

Please do give it a look, and I would love to hear your feedback – both on the photos and on the theme – with regards to what to add/remove or how I could improve it – what would you like to see etc. Now you could subscribe to its RSS feed, or you could simply “Like” the Facebook page – either way you can get an update if I post a new photo.

I would love it if you also posted comments on the photos too! Every photo I take, will have a small musing/story alongside. Writing that story is one of my favorite parts of photography. I look forward to reading such comments from you, whether they are on facebook, or on the blog.

Here is a screenshot of the new Matte Finish Photoblog.

Harmless Office Pranks – Part 2

Kokonad — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 01:00:20 +0000

Ok, so here is the second installment of office pranks (see first one here), except that these are not computer based. I have done a couple of these, and like I have mentioned in my previous post, make sure your target is a sport! You do not want to (a) get caught, (b) get fired. Most of these can be done, or rather should be done, when there is no one around – like after hours or so. In some cases, get a teammate – more the creativity, the better it is! So here’s my list of (almost) harmless office pranks – that are not computer related.

1. Photocopier needs to be fixed
Most of you office goers have access to a photocopier. That means you also know how and where the paper is loaded! Now, keep an object like a key or a pen on the glass, and make 50 copies of the same. You will have 50 pages that have a key/pen marked on the glass. Replace these 50 papers in the copier tray. Whenever people make copies the next day, there is going to be a black key/pen on the paper and they will think there is a key/pen in the copier. Tech support is going to be puzzled for a while.
Extremely funny/risky variation: Keep an annoying person’s narcissistic photo instead of the key/pen and make 50 or more copies. Everyone’s photocopied paper is going to have that photo as the background of their document!

2. The small time altruist
This one is a tip from Ankur, and it totally cracked me up. For every single day of the year (365 days), keep a penny (or a 5 paisa coin) on the desk of your target. Every single day. Unmistakeably. He will come in every day at work and find this coin and will not know where it came from. Initially he will be amused, then perplexed, and towards the month end he will be frustrated like crazy. Don’t worry, the fun continues for 11 more months! It costs you $3.65 or Rs 19 the whole year. Totally worth it.

3. Label everything. EVERYTHING.
If you have a label maker, then great. If not, gather around a troop and label everything on your target’s desk. Pens, paper, monitor, button, book, chair, arm rest, dirt, mouse, mouse pad, mug, glass, photos… everything! It’s fairly amusing. If possible, keep doing it every week. Pranks keep getting funnier if no one knows who’s behind all of it!

4. Wrap it all up!
This is fairly time consuming, but if pulled off, it is HILARIOUS. I did this with newspaper – but it is much much better if you can do it with aluminum foil or saran wrap. Wrap everything in sight… and definitely don’t forget the chair. Monitor, mouse, wires, phone, stationery, books even the table itself. Make sure you are there to see the look on your target’s face!

5. The lewd mug
This is a definite favorite of mine. Very harmless but can cause a laugh riot. Your target should be someone who really loves his mug for drinking coffee or water. Even better if your target is somewhat obsessed with the mug. You will need a somewhat revealing photo of a scantily clad model. In the absence of your target, take the mug, and draw out a circle the size of the base of the mug on the photo. Pick a region that is most sexy – like the shoulders to the thighs. Cut out that part, and paste it to the bottom of the mug. Whenever your target drinks out of the mug, the other person clearly sees the racy picture stuck to the mug. Funnier if the boss is around, or in a conference meeting!

6. Vaseline on the toilet seat
Copious amounts of Vaseline. Oh it becomes so slippery and stays invisible… enough said.

7. Crime scene
Get police crime scene tape (toy stores typically have it). On the floor, draw the outline of a dead man with chalk, or colored tape, whatever permits. Cordon off the entrance with the tape. Not hilarious, but definitely fun!

8. Watery
Get a team with you on this one. Purchase about 200 paper cups and arrange them densely on the floor of your target’s cubicle. Fill water in all of them, one by one. Make sure you don’t fill upto the rim – it will spill when moved. The only way your target can get through to his chair is by drinking all of it! Want to make it even more fun? Staple all the cups together! It is important that it should be paper when you are stapling them together – plastic or styrofoam will not survive staples!

9. Kidnap, but don’t ask for ransom
‘Kidnap’ a precious item of your target. Take multiple photos of it in different forms of torture. At different times, drop one photo in his cubicle – never ask for a ransom. If he never tries to retrieve it, do the same with another object and continue! Pick an object of extreme importance to him… a soft toy from a girlfriend is ideal!

Remember: Always always keep a straight face. Try to solve the mystery with the target. You must be the last person he suspects!

Harmless office pranks

Kokonad — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:28:10 +0000

Ok. So today is another somewhat-partially-semi-productive day at work. It is at these times that it is absolutely essential that I tug at my brain cells that are designed for pranks. Ok, tugged. I am not going to play any pranks on you, my reader (or am I? ) because I love you so much. Here are a few harmless pranks you could play in your office, and whom you should make your target. Now, I have played some of these before – but I must warn you – make sure your target is a good sport – so that a fun war starts between the two of you. Or try your level best to be completely anonymous, so that NOTHING is traced back to you. That’s your call. Just make a judgment call before you do anything – you don’t want to get fired, right?

This feature might be a two-part post – the first is computer related pranks and the other might be cubicle related. If I work on the latter, it will be out sometime later this year. My colleagues are great sports and it is great fun playing pranks on them. It always starts a playful war which we remember for years to come.

Computer pranks are fairly simple to execute – I have played these pranks myself. For most of these you need your target’s computer at a time when he/she is not around and has left it unlocked. It is more fun if you are around to see it happening – depending on the level of ‘sinisterness’, get more people involved. Also, some of them will make them think their computer has been hit by a virus. Make sure you are around to tell them that they have been pranked upon – and to undo the prank too! You don’t want the computer administrators to come over and reprimand you when they figure out YOU did it!

1. The shutdown prank
This is a not-so-famous prank and it’s really unnerving for whoever’s sitting at the computer. It configures the icon to shutdown the computer with a given time limit and a message. Warning: This does not quite work as expected in Windows Vista. It works great with XP.
Target: Someone who plays games on their work computer. Too much.
> Pick an icon on the desktop or the start button (wherever the game is)
> Right click on it and go to properties, go to the Shortcut tab on top.
> In the Target field, remove the existing one and type in [shutdown -s -t 90 -c "Your message here"] without the parentheses. The number 90 is a 90 seconds timeout. Try it once on your own computer before going ahead with it.
> To abort the shutdown, go to Start>Run and type “shutdown -a” without quotes.
> Get creative with “Your message here” – you could write an official like message that “This computer has shown increased activity in facebook/orkut/sleazy websites and is shutting down to prevent further misuse” or “This computer has shown increased activity in games and is shutting down to prevent further misuse”
Variation: You can also modify the IE/Firefox buttons and watch that person freak out whenever he/she tries to open the browser! Make sure you are around to savor the panic!

2. The keyboard/mouse swap
This one is hilarious if it happens right. It requires two coworkers who sit close by. Wait till your coworkers have left office after shutting down their machines. Swap the keyboards and/or mice. Enjoy your day the next day.
Variation: Add a USB mouse to your one coworker’s desk and have access to that mouse at your desk. Works with USB mice. At the oppportune moment, nudge it or close a harmless window!

3. The sluggish mouse
If an optical mouse, take a small piece of clear tape and stick it over the laser. The results are hilarious!

4. The Microsoft Word AutoCorrect prank
This is my all time favorite and I have done it so many times! What you need is an unlocked computer. Open Microsoft Word and go to Tools > AutoCorrect options. Select the AutoCorrect tab and towards the bottom, you will see Replace and With.
Under Replace, type “the” and under With, type “that damn”. For example, “the fiscal year” becomes “that damn fiscal year”
Every instance of “the” will be replaced with “that damn” as and when your target types it. You can obviously make so many variations – parallel to pyarelal, someone’s name like mine – Kokonad to coconut etc.

5. The frozen desktop
Target: Anyone who has been dumb enough to leave their computer unlocked in a workplace!
Probably the oldest prank. But fun nevertheless.
> Close ALL open windows.
> Take a screenshot of the desktop (hit PrintScreen button on keyboard).
> Open MS Paint and hit CTRL+V (to paste). Save the file.
> Now change the wallpaper of your target to this saved image.
> To make it more fun, hide all icons so there are only images remaining. Right click on desktop and go to “Arrange icons by” and uncheck “Show desktop items”. Your target is going to think the icons are supposed to work, but they never do!
Optional: Auto-hide the taskbar as well. To do this, right click on the taskbar, go to properties, check the option for “Auto-hide the taskbar”

6. Mousing around
Go to mouse settings in control panel and make the cursor speed very fast or very slow. Watching someone drag their mouse across the office to move it an inch on screen is funny! Or you could go to pointer settings and make the default one an hourglass, so they will be left wondering what is keeping the computer busy.

7. Remap the keyboard
This is extreme fun because the keyboard no longer types what is written on the key. All keyboards are typically QWERTY keyboards – there is another standard – called the DVORAK keyboard. Change the keyboard layout to DVORAK and sit back to enjoy all the fun.

You must practise these at home a couple of times to make sure you know how to undo them, and also to be fast at it when you are actually executing them. Again, it is important to make a judgment call – you DO NOT want to get fired for this!

A sneak preview on cubicle related pranks: Use sticky labels for everything on your colleague’s desk – pen, mug, monitor, mouse, book, board etc. It’s amusing to see reactions! Or, wrap everything in aluminum foil. Everything.

Kya mara Camera!

Kokonad — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:28:00 +0000

Photo SHOOT!
It is with deep regret that I hereby announce that I have damaged my own camera – and it will cost $240 to repair it!
In an attempt to clean it, I ended up leaving lots of microfiber inside the image chamber, and thanks to static electricity, they wouldn’t come off. Then I decided to go brute on it, and ended up scratching one of the screens and it all went downhill from there.
Anyway, I recalled my camera without having it repaired and I have decided to try to fix all of it myself. I hope I do something good at the end of it…
Here are a few pics I had taken during a trip to rural West Bengal… there are many more photos taken, but I will be putting them up on a separate post.

Photography contest

Kokonad — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:59:00 +0000

I had submitted this photo for a Penn State international Programs organized photography contest – Picture Your World.
Yay, it won the first place! The category was “The human element”

“Of good times to come“

It is of Boudi, taken during the wedding in Feb 2005.

Research Group Website

Kokonad — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:42:00 +0000

After a lot of … repeat – LOT OF effort, I finally finished designing and got my research group website up and about. In the next year or so, lots of changes are going to be there, I suppose.

4th of July Fireworks – 2008

Kokonad — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 02:13:00 +0000

I had decided way back at the start of my PhD that I am going to see 4th of July fireworks in a different city every year. While the first year was in State College, the second happened to be here too. I have been traveling like crazy over the last 7 weeks, and I REALLY needed to rest. While my friends went camping and white-water rafting for this weekend, I decided to stay back. Sigh. Not the best of my decisions.
Thanks to having owned a (digital) SLR for the past year, I have been trying my best to take shots that are more and more difficult to capture… I must confess, with all lack of modesty, that I have been lucky a few times. But yesterday, there was large black cloud so low that it was obstructing the top right quarter of all the fireworks – Bummer. Most of the climactic show was missed, because of where I was standing.
Nevertheless, State College fireworks rank among the top few in the entire nation. The WOW feeling gets somewhat “goosebumpy” with the climax setting off over 40 shells a second. Anyway, here are a few of the shots. Hope you like them!

July4th Fireworks © Kokonad Sinha, 2008

Back then in 2007, I had no fancy camera. But I did happen to record the last 1:25 min using a friend’s camera.

Jump!

Kokonad — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:25:00 +0000

MY! FIRST! SKY! DIVE!

Free fall.
The ecstasy of free fall.

On a wonderful day of 15th June, after a lovely night of camping in Hickory Run State Park (PA)…

Our camping site, Hickory Run State Park, PA

…I jumped off a perfectly good plane from a height of 10,000 feet. And flared a parachute 6000 feet later. Like I was already not livin’ on the edge doing my doctoral studies.

Hazleton, PA. Above the Poconos skydivers. Taking along 13 other people, it was an exhilarating experience for everyone. Falling at speeds of over 120 mph (close to 200 kmph) makes your ears go deaf. Really deaf.

Words cannot describe it. You have to be there. Trust me.

It started with a basic training exercise as to what do do when we are airborne. After a slew of papers to sign and places to write our initials, the legal stuff (which basically relieves them of liabilities in case of accidents). Next thing, we are being sorted into flight numbers. Gaurav went first, and quite the ride of his life, making complete flips at 10,000 feet. Beautiful landing. He then talks of possibly undone zippers at 10,000 feet. Saumya has some real nice tips for skydiving, that involve flying kisses and flying boeings. Soon, lots of people were flying up and falling down 25 minutes later… all happy and smiling and extremely excited. Some said they were doing it again. Some said, never again. By the time it was my turn, I had no clue how it is going to be.

The plane was crammed with 7 of us, one of who was the pilot (and the owner of the place). Who needs a comfortable plane anyway? Why the other six? Two of us, me and my friend. Two tandem jumpers, guys “harnessed” onto our backs. Two photographers, who jumped with us.

After 30 seconds of deafening falling and flipping stomachs, there was a sudden jerk and absolute silence. The parachute opened. The contrast in sound was astounding. Five minutes of peaceful sailing in the serene quietness watching over the Poconos mountains.

A day before my jump-off, I informed my sister-in-law. (And thereby my brother). After the jump, I told my parents. Guess what my dad’s fist question was…
“Was it cold up there?”
“That’s the last of my worries up there, Dad!”

The Free Fall. Soundtrack: Bruce Springsteen – Long Walk Home

Was I terrified? Yes. When you are at 10,000 feet, and the door of the plane opens the same deafening sound with a spectacular view of the earth below. That’s terrifying. My smile vanished for a second. Then it was back.
Free fall.
The ecstasy of free fall.

Wah… Tag boliye!

Kokonad — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 18:03:00 +0000

A therapeutic tag. I volunteered myself into this. Thanks to Amrita, though. As Amrita says, it is not therapeutic in the real sense, but Jawahara’s calling it that, hence she’s calling it one too. And thereby I call it a therapeutic tag. A list of 10 things I miss in my life right now and another list of 10 things I would like to achieve within a decade from now.

10 things I miss in my life.
1. I miss a fully functional right foot. I miss all the sports fun I could be having if only this right foot had not been hopelessly sprained more than two years back. It’s yet to recover.
2. I miss the beaches in Chennai. In fact I miss any beach. But Thiruvanmayur (Besant Nagar) Beach, Chennai in particular. I miss the times I used to go to the beach at midnight, sit there watching the waves. I used to watch sunrise, have steaming sambhar-idli at Murugan’s Idli shop in the morning and come back to the hostel to sleep. Some of the brightest ideas of my life I got sitting at the beach, e.g. wearing floaters to the beach and not shoes.
3. I miss having a younger sister. I have always wanted one. Always. Someone to take care of and pamper and spoil. And always have gifts for. I envied my friends with little sisters. A kid brother would do too, but then, I am the kid brother.
4. I miss my days at school. By all standards they were carefree. Mischief was fun. I miss my old friends with whom I am barely in touch with…
5. I miss the time I used to have nice conversations with complete strangers at Barista or Cafe Coffee Day or even in the college fest. The best part was that I never met these people again in my life! I just have not had the opportunity to do that here in the US. Sigh.
6. Summer vacations during college days when I went home. I used to wake up regularly at 10:30ish. And sleep late.
7. I miss eating pani-puri at 4 pieces a rupee in Baroda. I used to hog, and even converted my parents into pani-puri fans. It’s close to impossible to get pani-puri at that rate and taste here in the US.
8. I miss some of the daily food my mom used to cook. In fact I miss them so much that I don’t even want to try to cook them. Reason? The last memory of my eating that must be a good one.
9. I wish I had a more eventful life or a better memory to jot down 9 and 10. Deep sigh.

10 things I want to achieve within a decade from now.
1. Learn that fancy keyboard lying in my room for a year, gathering dust.
2. Take formal lessons in movie editing and in advertising.
3. Take some fabulous, really fabulous shots using my camera. And get recognized for it.
4. Tour Europe. Go to every country on that land. Spend good time there. Tour New Zealand and Egypt too!
5. Stay in a Dubai hotel at no expense of mine.
6. Sky dive. That should be done next summer, though.
7. Visit (not just drive through) all 50 states of United States. 9 and counting. Visit Canada too.
8. Fly an aircraft. (Ha! Yeah right.)
9. Learn at least three social dances completely, tango being one of them.
10. Play with a tiger/lion/leopard cub with the mother tiger/lion/leopard nearby. In the wild. And not chicken out.

I tag: Devashree, Amit, Gaurav, Sunando, DreamCatcher, Charumani

Cirque du Soleil

Kokonad — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:40:00 +0000

Thanks to my research colleague, I got to go to a show by Cirque du soleil. And boy oh boy, I DID NOT REGRET IT. They had come to my university for a show named: Saltimbanco.

Cirque du Soleil (French for “Circus of the Sun“) is an entertainment empire based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and founded in Baie-Saint-Paul in 1984 by two former street performers, Guy Laliberté and Daniel Gauthier. Acclaimed by more than 30 million people worldwide, Cirque du Soleil has reinvented and revolutionized the circus arts.

http://www.thinkwelldesign.com/

Stunning human acrobatics. No ring and no animals helped make Cirque du Soleil what it is today. Each show is a synthesis of circus styles from around the world and has its own central theme, soundtrack and storyline which enthralls the audience into the performance by having no curtains, no pauses whatsoever, continuous live music and performers seamlessly from one scene to another. The stages are majestic, huge and their show is not limited to the stage in front of the spectators. It is spectacular, and sprawls from above the audience to water pools. The Cirque du soleil have shows all over the US, and if you ever have a chance to go for one, definitely go for it. It’s like 3 hours of perpetual goosebumps. Ooohs, aaahs and acrobats flying out and in so smoothly – like clockwork. The best (and outright scary) part is that they do not use safety nets… and if one person falters even by an inch, the whole stage collapses… it’s amazing how they manage it.

YouTube video: From their website (3:25 min)

YouTube video: Promo for Cirque du soleil (0:50 min)

Makes me wanna go to a Riverdance show too.

Which should be sometime in the coming Spring hopefully.