I’ve moved

I’ll be posting from my own domain from now on.

keep reading me @ bloggermathai.com/blog

Click here Bloggermathai

Construction and Relocation

I’ll be moving to a new domain as soon as I finish up the final touches on my blog and photography pages. Hope to see you on the new site.

Bombay Chopatty – Salmiya

Our quest to find a good chaat place took us to Bombay Chopatty last week. Its located in the food court of City Center, Salmiya. We had Pani Puri, Samosa Chaat and Dahi Vada. One thing we all agreed on was that the Pani in Pani Puri was the least flavorful of all the chaat we’ve tried so far in Kuwait. Compared to Bombay Chopatty, the pani puri at Sargam was 10 times better.

The Dahi Vada needed more spice and was quite bland. My favorite of the night was the Samosa Chaat, the samosa felt crisp, the channa was well cooked and spicy and the sev and other bits and pieces were real crunchy. There were 4 of us and we gave Bombay Chowpatty an average score of 2.5 out of 5.

Another round of fake tilt-shifts

Tilt shift photography is usually done by using a special tilt lens that moves across two axis with respect to the image sensor. These lenses are very expensive and are used by professionals to capture accurate images of tall buildings coz they provide perspective control. Now people use the same principles to have a bit of fun and create images that look like pictures of scale models and dioramas.

In my case I’ve used Photoscape to create the effect but it can be done via Photoshop as well. Here’s a page with some of the most beautiful examples of tilt shift photography. I hope to keep doing it till I get some really decent shots.

Nightmare commute

Is it just me or is everybody else facing nightmarish traffic on the way to work this past month? I don’t know what the deal is but roads 50, 55, 60, 80 etc are all choked in the morning office rush and to make matters worse you have the usual bunch of idiots who try to run you off the road or drive on the pavement/emergency lanes.

Thankfully in some areas the police have setup cement barriers on the pavement and park their patrol cars near the intersection to deter this kind of driving.

The nicest man on an RD350

If you were to sum up Amrit in one sentence, that would be ‘He was a nice guy’. Everyone who ever met him would always be won over by his sincere smile and enthusiasm for life and riding. I met him about 16 years ago when I was still riding my 12 speed bicycle and he would come rumbling in on a spotless Yamaha RD350.

At that time men with RD350s had superstar status and mostly acted like pricks towards us younger chaps who just had Kinetic Hondas or TVS Champs but Amrit was a real gentleman. He would let us sit on his prized RD and even take us out for a spin around the college campus. Years later he progressed into the realm of Superbikes and his experience and techniques grew exponentially but he was still the same ‘nice guy’. And that’s the way we should all remember Amrit Vikram, the nicest man I’ve ever met on an RD.

Fate took him away from his family and friends in a tragic motorcycle accident on October 15th 2010 but his memory will live on. Rest in peace my friend.

Update: you can contact his friend in Dubai thru the FB page thats been created: [link]

Update: From Joe

“With all due respects we ( friends/colleauges/realtives) have completed the all the formalities here in UAE.
Please be informed that, Amrit’s Mortal Remains is leaving from Dubai on Emirates flight EK522 ETD 21:45 to Trivandrum. ETA TRV Shall be 3.30 AM IST (19.10.2010).”

As easy as pizza pie

There really isn’t much to say; dough, sauce, toppings, cheese… BAM!!  Pizza!

Check out the list of pizza dough recipes here and this is the one I followed.

Stop motion video with Nikon D60

Last weekend on the drive to Fahaheel for the Enthiran movie, I was in the backseat of my friend’s car trying to get some decent long exposure shots of traffic lights. Unfortunately due to a weak tripod/mounting area most of the frames were badly shaken up and unusable. I didn’t want all those shots to go to waste so I used the Stopmotion editor in my camera to make a short film.

If you’re not familiar with the process here’s a summary on what to do;

In ‘Retouch Menu’ select ‘Stopmotion movie’. Select start frame and end frame and then save movie. The camera processes the frames and generates an AVI file as output. The stopmotion editor has a limit of 100 frames so I was only able to make a short video and I set the FPS to 6 so the clip has a duration under 17 seconds. In future I might combine two or three clips using Virtuaub or other video editors and see if I can make a short stopmotion movie.

A couple of the frames that were decent and without shakes.

Cheat meals

I look forward to Fridays coz that’s when I let myself have a cheat meal. Whats a ‘Cheat meal’? Its kinda like being a good boy all year and then getting an awesome gift for Christmas. Only in my case its Christmas time every Friday. During the week I get by on a controlled diet and I try to keep it around the 1250 to 1500 calorie mark (since I’m in reduction mode). My meals consists of oats, bran flakes, whole wheat breads and lean meats and vegetables. Obviously this creates a hell of a craving in your body for greasy, salty foods and a cheat meal is a good way to satisfy your craving yet not go overboard.

Here are some articles on cheat meals that you may want to take a look at;

Go have a cheat meal [link]

Should I take a cheat meal or cheat day? [link]

Can I cheat once a week in my dieting program? [link]

Xbhp Magazine

Xbhp is an online forum of bikers started by a few motoring enthusiasts and it has come a long way since its creation sometime in 2004 or 2005. I used to be a regular on the forums at the time as I was an avid biker and never missed an opportunity to log some miles on my bike on a nice weekend.

This is the first issue of their magazine and it looks very good! The pages are of a very high quality unseen on my regular magazines like Overdrive or Bike India. It also comes with a DVD containing two documentaries; ‘Superbiking in Khardung La’ and ‘The great Italian Bike trip’.  Not bad for 80 Rupees.