Salman Khan - Indian Superstar

Happy birthday Salman Khan. Just the other day, I was watching the trailer of Salman Khan's new movie "Jai Ho", which already has more than 12.5 lakh views on youtube since 2 weeks of upload date. While watching I remembered an action scene from one of his movies. I didn't immediately recall the movie name so I checked his filmography on IMDB. And Viola! the movie name was Wanted.

Salman Khan is one actor who has been active in Bollywood for about 2 decades starring in many average-to-flop films. However, it was only after his blockbuster Wanted in 2009 that lady luck smiled on him. Since then, he has constantly given great blockbuster hits like Bodyguard, Dabangg, Ready, Ek Tha Tiger and the most recent Dabangg 2. With every movie he's been setting a new benchmark for the box office collections.

In Dabangg, he stars as a corrupt but lovable cop. He believes in swift justice and dispenses it instantly.
He is a bad guy for the bad guys but a good man to all good innocent people. He robs from the villains but helps the needy and poor. His character was very much styled on the lines of Robin Hood, in terms of morality. That's what made him lovable.

It was in this film that certain things became iconic. His unique dance steps. His moustache. The action scenes in defunct warehouses. The "Smile Please" comic photographer. His Sunglasses.

Regarding his sunglasses, he always sports them on his shirt collar behind. I believe this fashion has attained a unique cult status among the audience. Many people have been emulating it since the movie. Check out this random photo clicked on a street of Mumbai.

Dhoom 3 - Bollywood's record breaking Blockbuster

Dhoom 3 - India's latest action thriller has broken all the box office records till date. People are constantly flocking to the theatres to watch the movie in hordes. As of today it is said to have already the ambitions INR 300 crore mark (approx. USD 3.5 million)

As per this Bollywood Hungama article, it has broken all the box office collection records for the Opening Day, Opening weekend, Highest Single day collection and all the collections of key international markets like USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand.

Dhoom 3 happens to be one of the costliest sequel in the Dhoom franchise, set in Chicago & Mumbai. Some critics also call it India's answer to Fast & Furious. The acting, the visuals, the stunts, the songs, the mystery are all top-notch and too impressive.

Plot wise, many movie-goers describe the latest blockbuster as a mashup of Christopher Nolan's The Prestige and some elements of The Dark Knight.

This bike-action thriller also features some uber cool BMW bikes like Aamir Khan's BMW K 1300 R and Uday Chopra / Abhishek Bachchan's BMW S 1000 RR. 

I bet the movie will boost BMW's bike sales due to a tremendous spike in the consumer interest, following the movie's success.

Taking pictures from a boat or ship - Photography

Taking photos from a boat or a ship can be extremely challenging.

Since the ship is always moving, you are moving as well. So it is extremely challenging to maintain a proper focus. Keeping the camera on a tripod reduces slight distortion but still since it's on an uneven surface, the resultant pictures are not so good i.e they are blurry and distorted.

Make sure the lens you're using has Vibration Reduction (VR) or Image stabilization. It reduces some blur and distortion from the pictures.

Try to use a grip hand strap instead of a neck strap for added stabilization. You can buy one online here from B& H Photo Video store in New York City.

I would recommend you experiment with the settings and try to master getting perfect photos. If you're in Manhattan, I'd suggest you take the free Staten Island Ferry and practice getting some pictures of the Manhattan skyline. First try during the day time and then try at night. However, it becomes extremely challenging to get pictures at night, due to low light conditions. I'll cover the low light condition scenario in another post for now.

Take a look at my very bad quality night time picture of the Manhattan skyline taken from a boat. You can imagine how challenging and difficult it is to get still shots from a ship. Observe the blurriness and distortion. This was taken during the 9-11 anniversary so you can see the 9-11 memorial lights.

Increase memory used by JVM for Ant builds

Sometimes for builds using Apache Ant, we come across the Out of Memory error. In order to increase the memory used by JVM for the build, do the following:

Set ANT_OPTS=-Xms256m -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=120m

Sherpa Goal Zero Solar Kit

Let me assume, you're reading this post because you're a keen camper or a hiker or are atleast interested in having those hobbies. If you're planning a multi-day hike / camp to some remote location, I'd suggest you take a look at the Sherpa Goal Zero solar kit. I came across this Sherpa-50 kit at the Eastern Mountain Sports in New York.

This kit is extremely useful to recharge your electronic devices like smartphones, digital camera, laptop, tablet, or basically any device either using the USB or the 12 V DC power plug port etc.

Sherpa-50 and other variations of the brand are easily available on Amazon.

However in order to recharge, you have to use sherpa batteries or use the solar panel or could charge using a 12V car. I must the Sherpa Goal Zero would be my first choice for my recharging needs when I plan to go to a long hike or a trek or go camping.

An excellent detailed review can be found here. Also check out a tabulated comparison chart for various solar chargers currently available in the market.

Twitter - request Archive file

Did you know that you request an archive file of all your tweets? Yes, twitter offers this functionality to users to download a file which contains all the activity and tweets of their profile.

To do so, click the settings (iron wheel) button on top and go to Account. At the bottom of the Account page, you'll see the following:

Bokeh blur effect - Photography

Bokeh is an interesting blur effect in DSLR photography. Most users new to the DSLR photography are not aware of the terminology. As a matter of fact, I myself didn't know what bokeh was, until one day I accidentally shot a photo with an interesting blur effect. The photo looked nice with the blurred lights during the night. Honestly speaking, it just happened to me while experimenting with different settings of my Nikon. I was just randomly trying out different combinations in various modes.

What followed was a bit of a research on the internet and lots of googling :) I came across this very helpful tutorial which helped me recreate the previous camera settings for a bokeh. After a bit of practicing I do feel that although the steps to create a bokeh seem quite simple at the first glance, it is infact quite tricky under various situations.

When you try to click a bokeh under low light conditions, it can be a bit tricky. Another tricky and challenging situation would be to try to click a bokeh of a city skyline at night from a boat or ship. We will look into this scenario in another post.

For now, lets just focus a bit on the bokeh. Check out a sample photo below to get an idea:

Bokehs can be extremely pleasing to the eye in stylish portraits. You could also use them as backgrounds and overlay text on top of it to create flyers, posters etc. In my next post on Bokeh, I'll specify some generic steps for recreating the camera settings and also some photos.