Coconut Cruncher

21st Aug 2016 Old Logo VS New Logo I can’t remember after how long I actually opened DeviantArt. It had been years. They've even changed their logo! DeviantArt is that great community of artists, novices, beginners, enthusiasts, professionals all sorts of people who come together to broadly share, discuss and learn art. I don’t know how I forgot about it. I had eve forgotten my password! When I remembered it and logged in, I noticed the 1999 notifications. It gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling to go through that site today. With all the instant platforms like Facebook and Instagram, people don’t maintain their blogs or Deviantart profiles anymore. But here’s the thing – Deviantart, CG Society, ConceptArt.org and Vimeo is where the real art community lies. Where you get love, critique and help from people within that community. I remember using Sketchaholic too, I wonder if that still functions. These platforms were exciting and inspirational! Besides professionals...

24th April 2016 Finally the khamba  (composter) arrived! I was really anticipating this guy! It's only been 3 days and I feel like a girl feeding her pet dragon. I even instructed by super co-operative roommates and my maid what we can feed it and how smaller bits should be made of all wet waste. I really hope I'm doing it right and I get good quality fertilizer by the end of this. Khamba inside out May I also say that thanks to the  Remix powder  I bought with this, it's not smelling at all as of now. I'm also mixing it up with some dry leaves or newspaper to absorb excess moisture and avoid fruit flies. I've successfully managed to live a week without buying some things I consume almost daily for snacks - chips, biscuits etc. Although, this is not a happy solution. I need to carry a container to buy my week's supply of junk food. :P Right now I'm eating freshly cooked food in newspapers - samosas, chaat etc. and visit shops which have their own plat...

17 th August 2012 Today we went to a small place by FC road called Little Italy. I first went there when it had newly opened in Goa; probably in 2000 or 2001. At the time I had never tasted Italian food in my life, and I don’t even remember tasting it.  In 2011 we went to Italy on a family vacation. It was one of the most beautiful countries I’ve ever seen. I’d say it’s my favourite amongst all the places I’ve visited.   I had never really enjoyed Italian food before I went to Italy. I found pastas too heavy, fatty and bland, and the pizzas I’d tasted at Dominos (the first and only pizza joint in Goa) were so dry and had such thick bread and less vegies that I had a strong disregard for Italian food.  Of course when I came to Pune for MIT, I tried some delicious Italian pastas at good restaraunts, although I was still not fond of all the pizzas after trying local pizzas as well as the popular pizza brands like Dominos, Pizza hut, Smokin’ Joes and Papa J...

21st July 2013   I had saved Steve Levitan’s writeup here as a word file on my desktop. I’m a seriously moody reader, but today I finally read it, and I felt that it was so awesome to read such fresh juicy stuff! Modern Family is one of my favourite sitcoms, and I had to give it a shot. At the bottom there was a link and t led to this page, so I ended up reading quite a few ‘Why we write’ and I decided ‘Hey, I can do this too. If anyone would give me a read!’  The earliest I remember (there must’ve been earlier instances) being was introduced to writing was in 7 th grade. We had to write comprehensions that we were graded on in English literature. I was decent with grammar, but I was terrible at writing. Atleast that’s what I thought and what my marks told me. They focused too much on spellings and length too, which turned me off from writing whole-heartedly. For obvious reasons, it never occurred to me that I could ever write professionally. Art, on the ot...

Once upon a time in the kingdom of Heaven , God was missing for six days.  Eventually, Michael the archangel found him, resting on the seventh day. He inquired of God. "Where have you been?" God took a deep sigh of satisfaction and proudly pointed downwards through  the clouds, "Look, Michael. Look what I've made!" Archangel Michael looked puzzled and said, "What is it?" "It's a planet,"  replied God, "and I've put Life on it. I'm going to call it Earth and it's  going to be a great place of balance." "Balance?" inquired Michael, still confused. God explained, pointing to different parts of earth. "For example, northern Europe will be a place of great opportunity and wealth while southern Europe is going to be poor. Over there I've placed a  continent of white people and over there is a continent of black people," God continued pointing to different countries. "This one will be extremely...

22nd Oct 2012 How wonderful to login my google account and find this!!! It's totally made my day. I'm already teary! Here's another photo which really touched me by my fellow HP fan mamta. :) This is absolutely 'wunnerful'! :)

20th October 2012 I was stumbling for information on dog intelligence for my colloquium paper, and I found this goldmine of knowledge! This is one of the best most interesting and well explained documentaries I have seen on dogs. From where they came from, to what they are now. Enjoy!

14th July 2012 I have always wanted to learn french, but I never got the time or the opportunity! Luckily I was going through the TED videos and I found this AMAZING site called Duolingo that helps you learn different languages for free!! The only way you pay is with your time and you help translate sites like wikipedia, and you learn by translating! :) Isn't that cool? Here's a video explaining how it works: Here's the video through which I got to know of its existence - a TED talk of Lui von Ahn who invented CAPCHA!

Somebody watch these cute kitehhhhs!!!!! :D :D How to walk your human Kitten's Dance of Intimidation How to introduce two cats to each other What a great reference for us animators!! ;)

SO Cute!!!! I really wanna see a free panda once in my life!! They're too adorable.. Actually I find all the animals so. ^^

An article by the great Hayao Miyazaki san, the Walt Disney of Japanese Animation. Truly insightful and a refuge to struggling animators over the globe - one of the best reads I've had. http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/aboutanime.html#fn1

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night aski...

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates. The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion. Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influ...

This is another example of an amazing illusion!!! The last sentence is so true.If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, the dots will remain only one colour, pink. However if you stare at the black ' +' in the centre, the moving dot turns to green. Now, concentrate on the black ' + ' in the centre of the picture. After a short period, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see only a single green dot rotating. It's amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don't disappear. This should be proof enough, we don't always see what we think we see.