Prashanth HN

As many of you already know, I’m a big music lover, I like all kinds of music. Well, yeah, whenever I say that many people chip in saying me too, me too But normally these folks listen to 20 rock bands & say I love all kinds of music

I rely on last.fm most of the time for music though majority of my 750GB hard disk is filled with music. It just costs as much as a visit to CCD, so that’s fine, I just love it. When I wake up, I normally play Manish Vyas tag radio on last.fm which includes Manish Vyas, Prem Joshua, Tabla Beat Science, Karunesh, Talvin Singh, all Indian classical & new age artists. Listening to this kind of music brings some kind of smooth start for the day. Later in the day, my listening depends on the mood, so it’s normally random. If I’m in a romantic mood, I listen to Bollywood, kannada, tamil, telugu music, if something is fucked up I listen to Linkin Park!! If feeling down, Coldplay. When there is a little headache, I listen to metal, preferably Iron Maiden. Even the research says listening to loud music releases some kind of hormones in brain which gives ‘feel good’ feeling!

When my mood is normal, I listen to rock, punk, hip hop, dance, trance, electronic, metal, alternative…etc. My normal playlist includes Green Day, The Prodigy, Fall out boy, coldplay, 3 doors down, Dream Theater, Flo Rida, Bon Jovi, Poets of the fall, Lifehouse, DJ Tiesto, Deadmau5 and lot others. I listen to lot of Indian bands too, motherjane, Junkyard Groove, Swarathma, Sona Mohapatra, Zero are few of those. When I get bored of all the music I have (thats very rare!), I just hit last.fm & listen to ‘world’ tag radio & discover some music which is in some language which I cant figure out!!

I have the habit of listening to music as I sleep! Normally I play instrumental tracks at this time, create a playlist worth 30 to 40 minutes & sleep. Thanks to this winamp plugin which automatically shuts down the computer once the playlist is done! I think Blackstartblues is the most played artist at this time for me. And not to forget my new favorite ‘Rodrigo y Gabriela’, acoustic guitars on steroids!!!

And forgot to mention about my last.fm profile, do check it out & add if you are on last.fm. Most of the music I found are via last.fm & last.fm friends. If you are a music lover, you should be using last.fm. It keeps track of all your listening & gives suggestions based on that. And also helps in finding music compatibility with your friends. Personally, I’m very addicted to Last.fm radio, especially when I play “My Library”  or “My loved tracks”. 3USD a month is really great for what it offers.

I’m yet to find kind of music I hate, any suggestions??

1. I don’t use twitter like a group chat! Ex Tweet: “@A @B @C @D LOL @Efff must be named Fuckasura Lol ”
2. I don’t tweet about products which are #Fail. If you don’t like it, don’t give a damn about it. What’s the point in tweeting “iPad sucks” for 100 times & making it trending! For record, I tweeted only once about iPad, that too I guess about that spoof ad.
3. I don’t participate in making some lame #hashtag trending. Ex: #Nityananda. For those who were part of it, what do you think you achieved by making that trending? All phirangis woke up to see Nityananda trending, they go search what’s it is about. You know what kind of impression they might have got about our culture? our nation?
4. I don’t tweet about #IPL (Seriously)
5. I don’t participate in RT & win contests, let it be an iPod or a Mercedes car!
6. I know the difference between RT & @Reply!
7. I’m on Twitter for valuable conversations which used to happen in early 2009 & 2008. And all those folks who were adopted to that kind of Twitter aren’t active today. Because, the other kind of people outnumbered them in a large volume.

When somebody ask me what Twitter does, I always say “It doesn’t do anything, it’s just a platform, you can use it any way you want to!”.

Well, this is my personal opinion, the way I wanted Twitter to be, I’m not enforcing my thoughts, you can go ahead & use it the way *YOU* want it!

To conclude this little post, my handle on Twitter is @hnprashanth

I met this tall guy Vikas SN at a random tweet up around a year ago! Which essentially means we were following each other. I used to pull his legs saying “You are a human RT bot ”, he never took it seriously & went on & on!! Then after few months I realized that, without knowing, I had  started a practice!!! Whenever I’m busy & couldn’t check Twitter whole day, I just visit his timeline at the end of the day!!

This is his typical timeline!! Any thing interesting or impressive happening of the day, it must be present on his timeline! His handpicked RTs could never bore you. Today, this timeline made my day by linking to a “20 Essential Tips and Tricks Every Flickr User Should Know” where I discovered really awesome tools which can help me use my “Pro” account at it’s limits!!

Hope this dude continues doing this great job! You can follow him @tsuvik

Some of the facts about Orkut which I found with set of friends I have there, but it’s the same for most of you I guess.

• Most of the people on Orkut have personality disorder!! They pretend to be something which they are actually not.
• Though there’s a separate box provided by Orkut to update status, most of them still edit their First & Last name to update status. Like: “Rahul – back from the trip!”
• More than half of my friends don’t have their own picture to upload, they use some actor or actress’s pictures!!! <This annoys me a lot>
• “LOLZZ” is the most used word!!! in status messages, scrapbooks, etc…etc.
• They use some jinck-chack characters in their names, which takes a while to understand to read & understand who that person is! Like: ♥●• ♪Ğø|{$.. ♥●• …not lonely any more !!
• Some of them are so ego conscious, they force you to write a *good* testimonial for them, rate full on “Cool”, “Trustworthy” & “Sexy”
• Most of them are “Very attractive” or “Mirror cracking material”

That’s it for now!!!

Exactly a week ago, last Sunday I was featured on Kannada daily Vijaya Karnataka. It has such a huge reach that I got calls from friends whom I haven’t met from 4-5 years!! They had no clue about me getting into blogging & all. They knew the guy who was collecting rupee by rupee, make it 15bucks, visit a cyber cafe to check Gmail every week!!

Though getting featured on a news paper isn’t a big deal for me, it is for my mom. She literally called up everyone who were rude about her & me when I screwed up my 2nd year PU. So many people, relatives scolded me with every other word available in dictionary! People said like “Send him to my hotel, I will hire him as a cleaner”, “Let him work in my estate, will pay 1k/month, should be helpful to you”, “Why don’t he hang himself?” & lot lot more. Moms said to their kids “don’t mingle with Prashanth, he’s a bad guy!”. I was all alone, eyes filled with tears, looking out of window. I was abandoned to all functions, even if go it was ending in an embarrassing situation.

Because of all these comments & bad economic status, my father decided to put me on some job. He took me to some factory nearby to get me a job of loading/un-loading goods! Thankfully the manager of that factory didn’t accept me & suggested my father to give me one more chance. Mom still had some trust on me & forced dad to give me one more chance. Dad finally accepted with one condition that I shouldn’t ask for a single rupee from him!

I decided to go for Diploma in Electronics.

Sponsors of life!!

I looked for all diploma colleges in Bangalore, I couldn’t make it to Govt. college since my SSLC aggregate wasn’t that great. Finally chose a private college with very less fees & requested them to accept fees in installments! I visited many Swamijis, ashramas, needing economical support for my studies. Ones who contributed most of my college fees were Vireshananda Swamiji of Ramakrisna Ashrama, Tumkur & a far relative named Vijay. Remaining I collected from relatives & others. Somehow I raised funds for my studies & finished Diploma with first class.

Change in tone!

Though I am into blogging from a very long time, never cared to tell about it to my relatives. They got to know about it only after article on VK. Now they say to my mom “Your son is brilliant”, moms of my cousins ask me “teach something to my boy also na!”. They might have forgotten what they said before, but how can I? I just smile at them & say “Sure, why not?”.

Bangalore’s first Bloggers Meet happened around 2 years ago, probably in July 2007. I had just started to think about blogging, just had the domain techbangalore.com & having huge traffic of around 150-200 hits per day I felt having a domain is great deal & thought “I am the only one!” (Russel Peter style). I was not even aware of other blogs & bloggers at all! So, Bangalore Bloggers meet was very curious for me. With that curiosity in mind, got prepared for the meet & went to venue BrewHaHa, Koramangala.

I wasn’t as social as now, was just answering people who were talking to me. Few of them (Jerry, Adheeth) thought I am a Mallu going by my curly hair! And Sanjuktha was repeatedly asking “Are you really from Bangalore!! I was just watching all the people, what they talk, what they do, quietly sitting on a bean bag. There was long intro session & I was bit nervous when my turn came!! One of the interesting intros was from TheCruisemaniac (Ashwin Murali)! He was talking about some Para Gliding camp & stuff like that & people were WOWing at him! After the intro session, people started asking more about it & he was surronded by fairly good crowd. I was like “Who the hell is this guy!!? Looks like a BIG SHOT!!”.

I finally made my mind to say hi to The Cruiser! He wasn’t that interested to talk to me & handed over his buiss card. I thought it’s from his employer, but it had his Blog url, email ID & phone number. I was hugely surprised to see that black, simple buiss card (well Blog card!). Went back home & checked out his blog thecruisemaniac.com which was printed on his buiss card. It was pretty good & nice. My feeling about Cruise remained in mind!

Now we are big time friends (LOL) & I recall this moment whenever he ask me “Maga, suggest me some posts for my blog”!