Vishwas Krishna

Until today afternoon, I had always covered my iPhone 7+ with tempered glass. It was perhaps my  paranoid mindset which made me install the tempered glass within moments of starting to use the iPhone.  I wish I had waited a bit before applying it. The reason which made me remove it was the obstruction it caused when I tried to bring up multitasking menu through the edge of the screen. And now I am so glad I removed it. It is so smooth to switch apps (I'm on beta iOS 11.1) now.  Do yourself a favour and remove it and then try using the phone. Thank me later. Stop being paranoid (like me:)) about the scratches and start using without the tempered glass and you will notice how much better your phone feels.

Ever since online steaming sites like Hotstar Amazon Prime and Netflix started in India, I have taken to watching movies and series on them rather than going to theatre. I watched Dangal twice when it came out and recently watched Dunkirk on the big screen. Apart form these two, never felt the visit to theatre was worth the movie. Many people recommended Newton last month and though I told them I would certainly watch it, what I actually meant was I would certainly watch it once it's eventually out on Netflix.  Somehow, I don't feel there is any incentive to watch movies in theatre. Felt bad after watching Bahubali 2 in theatre. Somehow after watching that now I am skeptical of watching movies in theatre. And moreover, I have felt a Narcos and House of Cards, to some extent, are far better than the movies which are released here. So why waste money when I can anyway watch these on my phone itself?

I often wonder why do I even put up with Airtel? Reason is simple - their 3G/4G is almost non existent, at least in Mysore. Very unreliable. Have to constantly switch between 3G and 4G and inspite of doing so, nothing works. But what other option do I even have? Have heard similar stories vis a vis Vodafone and BSNL. Jio at least works at 8 mbps speed.  But their calls are still facing lots of issues. Not even considering other options. I can't believe this is 2017 and we still don't have reliable 3G /4G here in Mysore. 

Nikon ML3 is the wireless remote which works with Nikon DSLR cameras using the inbuilt infrared option. I read several articles on web regarding long exposure photography and most of them mentioned a separate wired shutter release option as a prerequisite, but I did not come across any information regarding using of a wireless shutter release option for "Bulb" or "Time" mode for long exposures.  I had already placed an order for Nikon ML3 for my D3300 and would have been disappointed if it had not worked with the bulb mode. Fortunately, it did. Pressed once, it locks the shutter and pressed again, it releases the shutter. It does not, seemingly, differentiate between bulb and time mode, but it essentially works well.  Go ahead and buy it if you want to experiment with long exposure or for controlling shutter remotely, but make sure you also buy the spare CR 2025 battery for the wireless remote to be on the safer side.

My niece crying My niece getting up from sleep I have been dabbling with audio recordings since quite sometime now. Recently acquired Zoom H1 and just yesterday recorded these two audio files and now putting this here to test how exactly the embedding options work on Blogger blogs.

I learnt very late that I better not interact with friends & family on social media sites. In fact, I have blocked few of my best friends on Facebook and don't follow any of my relatives, except one, on Twitter. I don't know or have forgotten the reason why I blocked them many years ago. But now it just doesn't matter, neither to them, nor to me. I believe, social media can or should never replace our personal interaction with friends and family. That is why I dislike large family and friends WhatsApp groups. It, eventually, kind of becomes a substitute for the actual interaction.

Not always do I listen to music while reading a book. Most of the times, it is only because I want to avoid the outside noise. For those moments, I am more grateful to those wonderful composers than those who put their thoughts into words. Music, when I am reading , elevates not just the writing but my entire thought process. Yes,  writing can take us to unimagined places and makes us think and ponder over so many things. But when I listen to music in the background, that makes me experience emotions which are far more intense, far more complex and which can never be explained. In that moment, I completely surrender to the music in a way I can, perhaps, never surrender to words.

Yesterday, I went to a shop near my uncle's house to buy groceries for my aunt. The shop which was reasonably a big one, was surprisingly manned by a very young and talkative kid. He started conversing with me as if he had known me for ages. He was continuously talking about cricket and asked if I was following the t20 world cup. When I said I only watched test cricket and stopped watching that too, of late,  he had a look of someone talking to an alien. Said he liked Dhoni and I was also surprised when he started rattling about the spot fixing controversy. Going by his size,  I thought he was wasn't aged beyond 9 years. But then, when I asked if he was going to school, he said he was now in sixth standard. Only then I realised it was the summer holidays for him. I was done with the purchasing at the stores and  enquired if there was any shop,  nearby, which sold milk. He immediately said, "We sell milk too" (with an expression of how could I not know). I confessed...

If you are in Mysore, or closely following the developments of Mysore, it is hard to miss the issue of theatre repertory Rangayana . It pains to see that the organization which should be concentrating on the production of plays is now embroiled in bureaucratic problems. Rangayana is a state government funded theatre repertory started under the initiative of B.V. Karanth almost 25 years ago. Most of their initial years were spent for the sake of training. Public shows started only after few years of training. It has taken lot of effort, mainly by Karanth and later on by others, to build the team. It was when Prasanna became the director that Rangayana started the practice of weekend shows. And that practice is in place till date. If you visit Rangayana on a Sunday, you can be rest assured of a play being performed at six thirty pm (usually by Rangayana or by other teams when they are on a tour). Being in Mysore, we get to watch other amateur team’s productions too. ...

It has been many years since Blogger was started (1999) and later on, acquired by Google (2004). And Symbian platform has been around since 15 years. Surprisingly, Blogger never thought of developing an app for Symbian nor did the developers. To be fair to Blogger, the Android and iOS apps were developed by them only recently. But at this point of time, no US based service will probably invest their time and money on developing for Symbian (Kindle is another such service). But in the last one year, Symbian has perhaps seen the birth of several apps for the platform than it did in all those years of existence. But none of them filled the void of a missing Symbian app for Blogger services. That is why I was overjoyed when I saw this blog post by developer Anand Bibek. The app went live last night on Ovi Store. But is it really worth the wait or is it just another QT/QML app? Read on. As you start the app, a fairly simple Sign in/Sign up screen shows up. I would beli...

How does one write about music? Of all the arts, the most difficult to describe is the music, at least, for me. With films (and books), I can very clearly say what I like, what type of acting I do, or do not like (since my main criteria for liking films is acting and then the story and rest). Also, with films, there are so many areas which I can write about, the direction, story, dialogues, screenplay, music, cinematography, etc. But when it comes to music, or as in the case of this blog post, a particular song, there is that song and nothing else. Especially, for someone like me, who does not understand or worry much about lyrics. The purpose of this lengthy introduction is me trying to explain how difficult it is to write about the song which I love and love only for the sake of the music. However hard I may try, it would be difficult to fully express how much or why I love this and to what extent. Perhaps, this is because of the limitation of the language or my knowledge of the...

This was something which was long overdue. Finally found the time to visit the KSRTC suburban bus stand and review it. KSRTC took a long time to repair or renovate or whatever nonsense they wish to call it. But the bus stand is pretty much the same as it was before that wasteful exercise.  The idea to write about this and the person who accompanied me to the bus stand and without whose inputs this review wouldn't have been anywhere near what it is now, wishes to remain anonymous for various reasons. Below, I reproduce the article which first appeared at the MGP blog over here .  Poorly Designed Suburban Bus Stand The suburban bus stand of Mysore on Bangalore Nilgiri Road has been upgraded at a cost of Rs. 30 crores under JNNURM. MGP has received complaints from the public about the poor conditions prevailing in this expensive bus stand. These conditions appear to be a consequence of numerous defects in the planning, design, execution and maintenance of the ...

A quick review of the Nokia N8 which I bought recently . Home Screen Menu My Nokia N8 came with the latest version of Symbian, that is, Anna. For someone who was using a XpressMusic 5800 Symbian^1 phone, this was a huge improvement. First, the obvious, camera. 12MP Carl Zeiss camera is actually as good as what I had heard about it since it's release. So much so that, I have never felt the need to use my Nikon L120, unless it involved using optical zoom. You can checkout few pictures in my Flickr stream . Weather App Ovi Store Since there was already a leaked version of Symbian Belle available on the net (only for N8), I did not hesitate to break my warranty and install it. And I'm glad I did that. The new notification bar, more options with the home screen and widgets and also the improved battery life plus the overall look of the phone is too good to miss. Smart Office gNewsReader At least for me, battery life is important factor for a s...

After having used the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic for around two years, last week, I finally upgraded to Nokia N8. Of late, I have been using my mobile device to view and write huge amounts of text. The 3.2inch resistive touch screen of 5800 wasn't helping my cause. My use of mobile phone, right now, is restricted to 1. Browsing (Belle browser, Opera Mobile 11 and Opera Mini 6 are doing the job efficiently) 2. Using twitter (of course, Gravity ) 3. gNewsReader for Google Reader feeds, SymPaper for Read It Later articles, SymNote for writing notes. 4. Picsel Smart Office for reading pdfs and using MS Office documents 5. Default Symbian^3 mail client and Mobile Documents for using my Gmail and other mail accounts. Taking pictures (12 megapixels Carl Zeiss camera), using "USB on the go" and also, the FM Transmitter are some of the other features which I regularly use on the device. But why not Android? Yes, in that price range, it is easier to find better ...

  As evident from the poster (which is in Kannada), this is about the book release function of " Etta Haaride Hamsa ", authored by noted theatre director S Raghunandana . For the first time, our theatre troupe, RANGAVALLI is venturing outside the area of performing plays. With the guidance of Prashanth S Hiremath, S Dwarkanath and K J Sachidananda (who also designed the above poster), we are conducting this program on the coming Sunday, 14th August at 10:00 am at Sriranga, Mysore.  Please do come.

Few days back, I was part of the conversation at home, which circled around the state of roads in Mysore. Roads in Mysore can be categorised in to two categories. Either they are bad or in the process of becoming so. Because every new road invariably turns into a field of potholes immediately after encountering few rainfalls. Also, contributing to this is the constant road repairs by JUSCO and JNNURM projects.But the surprising thing is the way citizens of Mysore tolerate such bad roads. We ended our conversation admitting that we were not any different from the rest. (Note: I'm different. So I posted this.)

This is a temporary post until this blog becomes active. I'm not even sure when this will be active. Hopefully, soon. I'm currently blogging here and here is my twitter page.