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

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!!!

I already posted that I am going to Star Party with Bangalore Astronomical Society. I finished my trip last night. Thought of sharing experience of my first sky observation session with BAS.

Naveen took care of introducing BAS members to all of us, I actually knew many of them already. Since observation session was going to be at night, we went to Talakaveri & came back in the eve. Trekking & getting lost inside the forest with new friends was lot of fun! We were back in the eve & started preparing to Star Party. That wasn’t much for me to prepare, but BAS crew was busy setting up the Telescopes, Binoculars on top of tripods. Naveen divided us into groups & assigned one BAS member to show & explain objects. There were three groups, one with naked eyes (;)), one with binoculars & the one with a huge Telescope! The idea was to look at objects with naked eyes, binocs & telescope & find how different they are. We went through many objects in the same way. I was impressed with double cluster, it looked as a small little white patch for naked eyes. Amar setted up his binoc to point to double clusters, I was curious to see how it looks like through binocs. It was awesome, through binocs, I was able to see two star clusters beside each other, I could see the stars in it overlapping on each other. It was not end, I was even more happy to see how spectacular it is via Shashank’s telescope. I could see the separation between stars clearly. I looked at Shashank to express my “wooooww” & looked back, bah! one cluster was gone! Shashank was ready to answer me & told me about movements of stars & sky. I asked hell lot of questions to Shashank & he was glad to answer them.

As observation session carried on I saw Andromeda galaxy, Orion Nebula, Bode’s & Cigar galaxies, Saturn with rings & two moons many more objects. Shashank wanted to show me how he does Astro Photography, but unfortunately sky got fogged & dew drops started accumulating on lens of his camera. But I got a good explanation about astro photography by Naveen. He told about lot of factors involved in astro photography including tracking, piggy packing..etc. Observation was great, it was my first.

I thank all BAS organizers & volunteers to make this to happen. Hope I would get time for next starparty.

Photos:

Pics of the trip are available on my flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/hnprashanth/sets/72157612953776521/. Don’t expect for any astro photographs, I am not into that yet. There is also no photographs of telescopes, equipmnets etc, because it’s not allowed to use flash lite in observation session. But sure, the pics gives you an idea how we enjoyed our trip

Every person will have his own thought about his home. I do have a thought about my dream home! It should be atleast 40 – 50 KM away from town, a farm house, a swimming pool (I just love playing in water!), a badmitton court, lawn….etc…etc. So you might be thinking, even if I have a house like that, I might not be having time to go there! I have a quite different thought for it. My another dream is to become *successful* full time blogger. And if that happens, I don’t have any reason to stay in this city. I just need a computer/laptop & a internet connection. Sitting under a tree, listening to tweets of birds (not from twitter!), looking at colourful butterflies, birds & blogging is a dream. Will that really happen?