Infinite Driver is giving away a John’s mobile phone for the winner of his photo contest. All you have to do is shoot your mobile phone in an artistic or comedic way and submit it before the end of the month. More info on his site [link]
I found out via 248am that ISPs have cut their DSL prices back to normal rates. This is good news for some but I really got screwed since I paid 139 KD to renew my 1 MBps connection for 12 months. The rate now is 79 KD! WTF?
Internet prices are supposed to go South as the years go by but in Kuwait things work differently. Here’s how much I paid for my internet over the past few years.
2008
230 KD for 1 MBps for 12 months [I can't seem to find my post about it]
2009
170 KD for 1 MBps for 12 months [link]
2010
95 KD for 1 MBps for 12 months [link]
2011
139 KD for 1 MBps for 12 months [link]
In my last post I’d described how my friend and I failed to get a proper shot of the cannon being fired. We went again this evening and shot it again hoping to have learned from our mistakes. Now the entire cannon shot happens in less than a second and if it were just a matter of increasing the shutter speed then everything would be rosy. Unfortunately thats not the case.
First problem is light; now that summer is almost over you start to lose sunlight soon after 6 PM. Since I’m not shooting with a full frame camera I struggle to get enough light into my frame at certain conditions. In this case I made a compromise for quality and shot at ISO 1600. This meant that a 100% crop would show up a fair amount of noise and softness.
Second problem is speed; As I previously mentioned you hardly get time to react when the soldier shouts out the command to fire. So the solution to this problem would be to shoot in burst mode but once again my D60 hits a small problem there. I can only shoot at 3 frames/second so that means I have to time my shot so that I get at least one relevant frame within 1 second of the gunshot. I used burst mode to shoot @ 3FPS non stop till the smoke cleared.
Luckily all this worked out decently enough and I ended up with 3 good frames in a span of 1 second. I’ve made an animated gif here to show them in sequence.
EXIF data
Exposure 0.001 sec (1/1000)
Aperture f/1.8
Focal Length 50 mm
Focal Length 50.4 mm
ISO Speed 1600
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash No Flash
I’ve been meaning to go see this ceremony for a long time now and last week a couple of friends of mine and I headed to Naif Palace to see it in person. The firing takes place inside the courtyard and its best to get there by 6PM and the canon is fired exactly at the time of the evening prayer. Parking is available behind the building. This goes on throughout the month of Ramadan.
There were 4 of us with SLRs and none of us managed to get a shot of the actual burst of fire since it happened so fast. One moment I had my finger on the trigger and the next second it was all over and we just had huge WTF looks on our faces. I’m gonna have to try my luck again next time. I did manage to get some decent video though.
Iftar Canon – Youtube [link]
Here’s some background history on the ceremony [link]
There was a time when bus tickets were 50 Paise, a liter of petrol was 18 Rupees, beer was 30 Rupees and the awesome Phoenix burger was 28 Rupees. Magnasound was a hit music label and Rock Street Journal was the bible . It was also the time when bands like 13 AD and Rock Machine were busy quenching the thirst of a growing population of Indian rock fans.
Last night a friend posted an old music video from 13 AD and then I spent the whole night on Youtube listening to long forgotten songs from my childhood. Here’s a few of them;
13 AD – Ground Zero Youtube [link]
13 AD Lonely Insertions Youtube [link]
Rock Machine – Top of the Rock Youtube [link]
Rock Machine – Chains and Black Leather [link]
A close friend of mine got himself a Nikon D3100 a few days ago and I’ve been showing him his way around an SLR. Nikon keeps pushing the envelop with their cameras and they also extend that to their entry level cameras. This model looks like its gonna make its owner very happy.
A couple of years ago I’d posted about IndianRockmp3.com celebrating their anniversary by giving a free album download. Now two years later Indean Volume II is out and perfectly coincides with our Independence day. Rock on guys and all the best!
Indean Volume II download [link]
A few days ago I was with a friend of mine picking up some camera gear from Ashraf & Co. and I saw that they had the Case Logic holster bags in stock. I was looking for something small to hold my camera on short trips or when I’m just carrying the body and a single lens. This seemed like a good option and they were selling it for less than the price on Amazon!
Ever feel so frustrated with yourself that you just push yourself to the maximum and don’t give a damn about what happens to you? The past couple of weeks I’d been busy with my new job and tons of research and documentation and I hardly got any time to indulge in my model kits or exercise. Yesterday after a very satisfying lunch I thought ‘ok enough is enough, time to get this lazy ass back on the right track’
I drove to Shuwaikh KNPC KPC area and parked my car right at the very end of the lot and after warming up I started off at a brisk pace towards Sharq. Initially I thought I might be able to jog all the way till Kuwait Towers but as I went ahead I realized that may be too optimistic so I thought I’ll keep going till my legs can’t take it anymore. I had a full bottle of ice cold Gatorade and a playlist with Avial, Apollo 440 and Tron OST and the weather was perfect. It was about 40 degrees in our residential area but at the beach it was probably just about 28 or 30 degrees and there was a constant breeze which made things easier.
I jogged and speed walked all the way till Souk Sharq and I needed to stop at the shops there to fill up on water and that’s when I started to feel the fatigue. I understood that as long as I kept moving my body wouldn’t signal me that I was getting tired but when I stopped at the shop all of a sudden my knees felt weak and my calves started cramping up. It didn’t feel like I could go another inch forwards so I filled up my bottle and walked all the way back to my car. After uploading my run data I was happy to find out that I had broken my previous record of 12 Kms during the Taj Mahal run and also increased my top speed from 13 Kmph to 15 Kmph. Here’s the run data;
2011-08-12 18:57 (End)
From KNPC Shuwaikh to Souk Sharq
Created by My Tracks on Android.
Total Distance: 13.32 km (8.3 mi)
Total Time: 2:08:25
Moving Time: 2:05:20
Average Speed: 6.22 km/h (3.9 mi/h)
Average Moving Speed: 6.38 km/h (4.0 mi/h)
Max Speed: 15.30 km/h (9.5 mi/h)
Min Elevation: -25 m (-83 ft)
Max Elevation: 15 m (50 ft)
Elevation Gain: 283 m (929 ft)
Max Grade: 16 %
Min Grade: -18 %
Recorded: Fri Aug 12 18:57:09 GMT+03:00 2011
Activity type: jogging
Looks like Kochi is in for a treat on Independence day. There’s a great collection of bands, Mother Jane, Ground Zero, White Sugar, US, Exodus and DutchStreet. Wish I were in Kochi right now!
Youtube [link]
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