Vacationery happened!
I'm back after a great, much-needed holiday in Sattal!
So this was for this thing called the Carnival of e-Creativity (CeC) 2010, which had people working in electronic arts from all over India and the world coming together to present their work. Met some amazingly talented and intelligent people there (although a couple of them did turn out to be quite a pain). And of course, the fact that this was a hill-station helped matters a lot, especially in terms of photography!
Some of the very interesting people I met included a librarian from Yale (13 million books... wow!), a researcher from Chicago, a visiting prof at NYU (and her two adorable kids!), a CS prof from Haryana who's working on Ruby, a 6-foot amiable guy called Joker :), and lots of others. Yes, I realize that I seem to have veered towards the academia at the event, but I did make some good friends with a singer from Norway, a musician who's studied Mongolian singing (and is absolutely INSANE!), a super-chilled-out Swiss guy who lives in Delhi and mixes music, a video DJ from Mumbai who has amazing shoes and lots of other people. There were some who I was quite in awe of (like this music mixer from NY who's at least 60 but has the verve of a 10-year old, the world's fastest bassist O_o and this classical singer from Pune who sings absolutely ethereally!) so I don't think I really had a chance to interact with them properly. Maybe the intarwebz will make up for it!
Some interesting chats were about the software the CS prof is making for mentally-challenged children, and the prof's background... Also a small-ish chat about poetry with the Chicago researcher, then some talking with the NYU visiting prof about music and technology. Got to handle a Canon DSLR lens with Joker's permission :), and that was b-e-a-oo-tiful! Of course SLB (he's someone from back home, and there'll be more about him later - this is a chronologically challenged order, but what to do) and the two little girls were pretty much the highlight of the whole thing, but the other people were very interesting too. (Best part: Going up to a 6-foot guy who's well-built enough to pulverize me and saying "Hmm... so, Joker, that's an interesting name" :D)
So of course the long walks made for excellent exercise (and some sweet photography!). And the food was great too. As were the late night congregations at Shankar babaa's place... where else can you discuss circuit bending, Forrest M. Mims III, Richard Stallman and other sheer randomness over drinks and get to ogle over an awesome mini-library? Super stuff! Kudos to Shankar for making all this possible without suffering a nervous breakdown or a coronary!
So.. the website, in case you're interested in checking out who these people are, is here. My photos, on the other hand, which are mostly nature objects and very few people, although the people are all well-tagged and everything, are there.
So this was for this thing called the Carnival of e-Creativity (CeC) 2010, which had people working in electronic arts from all over India and the world coming together to present their work. Met some amazingly talented and intelligent people there (although a couple of them did turn out to be quite a pain). And of course, the fact that this was a hill-station helped matters a lot, especially in terms of photography!
Some of the very interesting people I met included a librarian from Yale (13 million books... wow!), a researcher from Chicago, a visiting prof at NYU (and her two adorable kids!), a CS prof from Haryana who's working on Ruby, a 6-foot amiable guy called Joker :), and lots of others. Yes, I realize that I seem to have veered towards the academia at the event, but I did make some good friends with a singer from Norway, a musician who's studied Mongolian singing (and is absolutely INSANE!), a super-chilled-out Swiss guy who lives in Delhi and mixes music, a video DJ from Mumbai who has amazing shoes and lots of other people. There were some who I was quite in awe of (like this music mixer from NY who's at least 60 but has the verve of a 10-year old, the world's fastest bassist O_o and this classical singer from Pune who sings absolutely ethereally!) so I don't think I really had a chance to interact with them properly. Maybe the intarwebz will make up for it!
Some interesting chats were about the software the CS prof is making for mentally-challenged children, and the prof's background... Also a small-ish chat about poetry with the Chicago researcher, then some talking with the NYU visiting prof about music and technology. Got to handle a Canon DSLR lens with Joker's permission :), and that was b-e-a-oo-tiful! Of course SLB (he's someone from back home, and there'll be more about him later - this is a chronologically challenged order, but what to do) and the two little girls were pretty much the highlight of the whole thing, but the other people were very interesting too. (Best part: Going up to a 6-foot guy who's well-built enough to pulverize me and saying "Hmm... so, Joker, that's an interesting name" :D)
So of course the long walks made for excellent exercise (and some sweet photography!). And the food was great too. As were the late night congregations at Shankar babaa's place... where else can you discuss circuit bending, Forrest M. Mims III, Richard Stallman and other sheer randomness over drinks and get to ogle over an awesome mini-library? Super stuff! Kudos to Shankar for making all this possible without suffering a nervous breakdown or a coronary!
So.. the website, in case you're interested in checking out who these people are, is here. My photos, on the other hand, which are mostly nature objects and very few people, although the people are all well-tagged and everything, are there.