Vinayak Talukar's Weblog

Who’s there ?

vnayaktalukar — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:46:15 +0000

Can somebody tell me the name of the bird please ?

Shot at Mandya, Karnataka, India.

Aaaa…hhh !!!

vnayaktalukar — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:43:21 +0000

Picture of a Sunbird. Shot at Mandya, Karnataka, India.

Desi Soda

vnayaktalukar — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:32:40 +0000

Desi Soda

This is the strongest soda on earth

Hesaraghatta Lake

vnayaktalukar — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:45:40 +0000

I am being obsessed with bird photography now a days. So wanted to try a few birds shots. Since it was only a trial I didn’t want to travel much for this. After a bit of inquiry at BPC and some bird photography forums, I realized that Hesaraghatta Lake would be ideal for this season of the year. So I decided to hit the road. I and my colleague at office decided to meet at the lake at early morning 6:30. I left my home [near Kengeri] at 5:45. I was following the google maps to reach there. But google maps don’t seem to be working well for me. The road that google showed, never existed !!! So I continued with some local guidance. The road seems to deny its existence; only pit holes

I continued to drive at 20-30 kmph I finally reached by around 7:15 AM. Not a bad time to start And then there was this big huge lake. Very nice atmosphere, very fresh. Then tried a bit of photography. My 300mm lens seems to be too bad for bird photography

Anyways, here are the results.

On the way back had a very nice chitra anna and two glasses of majjige….

Awesome day

Nokia 5130 + Sennheiser CX300 II = IPod Killer

vnayaktalukar — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 14:53:11 +0000

I bought a Nokia 5130 Music Express phone. And was very disappointed with the default headphones i had got with the phone. Though the phone series is Music Express the poor earphones were just worth throwing away. The miraculously I got a Sennheiser CX300 II. The combination of Nokia 5130 and the Sennheiser CX300 II was exceptionally good. No doubt the combination could beat the iPod anytime. I tried the same earphones with the iPOD, but no way it could beat the combination with my phone.

Skandagiri Again

vnayaktalukar — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:47:39 +0000

The last time I had been to skandagiri, it was full of clouds, BAD LUCK

But the thirst to beauty of nature drow me again to Sandagiri. This time it was awesome. The sunrise was amazing.

For further details you can see my prev post on Skandagiri.

One thing I would like to tell you is the route from Chikballapur to Skandagiri. The place is famous as Kalavara Betta amongst the locals. This is the road map to the hills.

And last but not the least, the fuel from my bike was stolen…. Those buggers had atleast so much sense to keep 1 litre fuel in my bike. I could thankfully drive to a petrol station. So be careful….

Teaching COLLAGE to kids

vnayaktalukar — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:41:22 +0000

This weekend I was in Belgaum, teaching collage to kids

It was fun with the kids. None of them knew what a collage was and were curiously listening to me

It was really fun. The kids enjoyed it a lot. They were using all possible images on the newspapers and pasting them onto the page. Most of them didn’t make any sense, but the creativity of the kids was worth an appreciation.

This is what one kid did.

A firefox concept [mozconcept]

vnayaktalukar — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 07:18:06 +0000

visit the concept here http://vinayaktalukar.50webs.com/firefoxConcept.html

will update more soon….

A break from work – Skandagiri

vnayaktalukar — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:03:41 +0000

7th October 2008 4:00 PM, I got way too bored of working. Too frustrated doing the same thing over and over. Wanted a break. So I asked for my team mate to suggest me some spot, Skandagiri was the answer.

Well then I Googled around it a bit and then realised that it was just 70km from Bangalore The place is very well known for the amazing sunrise there, so one need to trek at night. But its already 4 PM I was still at office so didn’t know what to do. I called up a couple of my friends Vyankatesh and Mahantesh [venki and maddy]. They agreed to come. Maddy is always ready for adventures so I can always rely on him for such nautankis

I went out and bought a couple of torches. It was 10 PM couldn’t find any better torches so bought some
China made stuff. Back at room at 11PM one of the torches didn’t work I was worried since we were suppose to trek at night. But still we 3 went on, we reached Chikkaballapur at 12:00AM. From there we went to Paapagni matta. There we parked our bikes and went out to trek. There were guides available for 300 bucks, who would take you to the peak, but we chose to be adventurous and went out on our own.

We started trekking at around 1:00 AM, it was almost pitch dark.

We started trekking in the dark with a couple of torches and a bag full of water and biscuits. Venki was too staminaless, he rested after every 10 mins of climb….

skandagiri

We kept climbing for around 3 hours. Since we had only 2 torches I took the help of my HTC Touch, very handy bright display. I was scared that it would fall off from my hand, but no other option, had to use. The climb was a bit scary since I was only relying on my phone for light. Some places the path was too close to the edge of the cliff, but not that tough or dangerous, its quite very easy trek. And then at 4:00 AM, we finally reached the cliff. Since we were climbing, lots of heat was generated in the body so we didn’t feel cold any time. But just after 15 mins of resting on the cliff it was already chilling. At 5:00AM the clouds started surrounding the cliff. I was too excited about the sunrise and the photos i would take.

But the clouds kept on getting dense. It was very difficult to see anything even in the torch light.

skandagiri

It was very chilling there. We could not even stand for a minute. Literally being in the cloud, it was very moist and winds were very harsh on us.

We waited there till 7:30AM but the clouds didn’t go away
I missed the sunrise i didn’t click any good photos and we just came back.
Hope to got there again in March to get some nice shots This is all i could get out of there from my camera.

skandagiri

But all in all a very good short trip. Amazing trekking at the night.

Being again a child for an hour

vnayaktalukar — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:00:43 +0000

Kite

Last week, on 29/09/2008 I had been to Belgaum, my native. I, along with two of my cousins, were flying kites. It was really a nice experience flying a kite after ages. I was on the terrace of my home and having loads of fun with my cousins. I could feel that I was a child again. Those childhood days when I used to do anything i wanted, i enjoyed so much. I hate being an adult now. I hate this stage of my life, where responsibilities overtake the fun in your life…

But as usually, life moves on and I just keep dreaming of those days