RGB Monday

Dustbins

During a visit to Elliot’s Beach in neighbourhood I saw these dustbins in color of red, green and blue and instantly captured it with the intention of sharing at RGB Monday.  The dustbins are installed to segregation of waste, where red belong to garbage and blue to recycling and green for organic waste.  

My first iPhone (SE) experiance

Just two weeks back my brother presented me a Gopro Hero 5, action camera, as my birthday gift while I turned 32 on July 31^st. This week I bought an Apple iPhone SE through a great Indian offer from the online giant Amazon. Though I am not a fan of apple products and had any thought of buying it earlier as I find their product costlier, but when I learned lately that iPhone SE comes with least weight of 113gm and advanced processor as iPhone 6s want me to go for it. Actually I was thinking about 16GB gadgets which come around $311 and I wasn’t in hurry, but the offer advanced my purchasing option and what I got was a 32GB iPhone at the cost of 16 GB!

image courtesy: google

IPhone isn’t new to my family and my brother had used iPhones for many years, but I had no interest of picking it up and I bought my first smartphone only in 2015 and my Samsung galaxy S4 mini is still doing well and smart enough. IPhone SE was in my mind to buy in future if I need an altar, but I didn’t want to miss to offer and to connect GoPro I need an advanced smartphone and SE is more than enough. In between my dad was complaining his mobile is very slow, so I thought why not give my phone to him and get myself an iPhone because he uses social network rarely and my phone is speed enough for his usage and this also one of the reason for purchase.

I am not a person who like big screen smartphones and the screen size beyond 4.5” is out of my comfort and difficult to hold. This’s the main reason I’m sticking to 4” display and I have searched a lot on internet but I couldn’t find an alternate to S4 mini and 4” category lacks great processer and has limited features to access and more over wasn’t weightless. I feel iPhone SE is designed for me personally because it fulfils my priorities and many reviews has praise the iPhone SE for holding a beast within a small cage of 4”. SE has the same technology as iPhone 6s and is operated by the most advanced iOS 10 and I really liked the classic look of this iPhone that comes from 5s.

Thanks to iCloud,  i could easy use the images shot from iphone directly from laptop  and one such picture was this

The iPhone has 12 megapixels camera with 4K video capture and to my surprise this is my third gadget with 12MP camera following my Canon Powershot SX 220 HS and GoPro hero 5. The iPhone camera is really superb and delivers an impressive DSLR quality images with quick shutter. The face detection and autofocus increases the desire to shoot. It has fingerprint security system but what amazes me atop all was the stability of the battery. So far I have charged the battery twice, and the one time change stands two full days for me using internet. Unlike my previous phone I haven’t switched off the wifi once stop using internet and it takes only 2 to 3% of power for the whole night.

Not to forget the iPhone Se is superb easy to use and instant response at the touch make feel awesome. The Space Grey color is admirable overall and l love the rear fining of the iPhone, so I have ordered for a transparent case cover for the iPhone to keep it visible. I’m happy about the real handset and it’s inspiring to use it more. 

RGB Monday

Splash of colors

It seems sometime i did RGB monday post, and when i think what to post today, the led blinks. The photo was captured on the national highway 45, while coming from Trichy towards Chennai and I liked the design or stickering of colourful water splash on the boot of the bus. I cropped the picture just to highlight the splash of colors and the bus belong to Pondicherry seems to drive towards the state. 

Lovely sunset @ Palavakkam Beach

Following the lovely sky watch last week, I joining Skywatch Friday again with a set of sunset photos from the Palavakkam beach in the neighbourhood. I last went to the beach in June and these were photos from one of the evenings and it was pleasant to watch the sun from normal setting to turn dramatic with golden shades in later minutes. Palavakkam beach is one of a best place to watch sunset, as you could see from the photos below the beach has a wide open sky with houses at distance, the sunset last enough to watch. 

Sunset before it turns much darker

Glorious moment

Sunset through half scrolled window of the car 

Church of Our Lady of Good Health, Aruvankadu

During my travel to Nilgirs, I come across this simple yet beautiful church at a small town called Aruvankadu, located between Ooty and Coonoor. The pyramid like architecture of the church was the first to attract me to take photos and thanks to the bit traffic that helped getting some decent photos from the slowly moved car.  

I had no idea about the church when clicked but a Google link tells that Aruvankadu is a part of Holy Spirit Parish since 1967. As the residents of this area found it very difficult to go there due to the distance, a new location with a house was found close by known as Boys’ Company where liturgical celebrations were conducted. On April 14, 1977, it was erected into a new parish and dedicated to Our Lady of Good Health. The construction of the new church was completed in 1994 and the consecration and blessing took place on 29th May, 1994.

Aruvankadu is an importance place in defence which houses the cordite factory, one of the 40 Indian Ordnance Factories. The cordite factory established in 1903 by the then British govt. on a huge campus, still caters to the defence services by manufacturing cordite (gunpowder, as it is generally known) which used in manufacturing arms and ammunition and also as a propellant in various armed tanks. Aruvnkaduu is also connected by the Nilgiri Mountain Railways. 

Green Hearts

Heartins grown in green

spreading the love like a vine

climbing on the tree.

Happy Friendship Day

Ps. Found these cute little heart shaped leaves at my uncle’s woodhouse/cottage in Thandikudi, where we spent our vacation two weeks back. 

Lovely Sky Watch I

During my recent travel to Thandikudi for vacation, I was fascinated by pretty skies once passed Villupuram on the national highways 45. As usual sitting from the front seat I kept clicking several photos on the move and on the sky but as we keep moving further the sky continued to enhance. Beyond Tiruchi the fluffy cumulus clouds turned the sky more wonderful, and in between there were few spells from the passing dark clouds. The sky continued to change its pattern as we kept moving, it was interesting to watch and I was dealing with the camera all the way taking photos. I took many photos, so I decided to share it by few posts and here are some photos shot around Perambalur. 

The above  two were shot around Ulundurpet

 

Linking this post with Skywatch Friday

Vikram Vedha

I wasn’t sure to write a review on the interesting action crime thriller Vikram Vedha, because many have given great reviews about the Tamil feature film, but like to note down few things that impressed me. The title itself would give clue that the movie is based on the concept of Vikramadithyan Vedhalam ghost story, where Vedhalam ask questions hugging from the back of Vikrama, the king to quest answer through the stories he narrate.

Vikram Vedha has Madhavan and Vijay Sethupathi and it isn’t a regular cop movie but a very interesting and different level of play between an encounter specialist and notorious gangster. First thing I felt watching the opening scene (shooting between police and gangsters) was Gautham Menon’s movie, though I know it was Pushkar-Gayathri’s combo (who made Auto and Va Q cutting) the action sequence were such casual that no one could expect at such a venture.

The name Vedha continued to travel for some time into the movie creating hype and sounding demon, were all broke into particles the way Vijay Sethupathi entered the scene in his own idle style of walk. What applaud from the audience! He appears in front of cops and escapes, revealing a story with questions to let Vikram answer through his investigation and at the end of each story Vedha escapes leaving a clue to glue on seat. 

The balance between the Madhavan and Sethupathi had been handled well and they played an excellent teeter-totter entertaining the people. Madhavan on his side exhibits great body language and his rough tone is apt.to the role of cop and Sethupathi, as young and mid-age did effortlessly the job of gangster and those watched his movies could understand what I mean the effortless i.e. natural acting.

Though not so parallel to the male dominate subject, the female characters of the movie do speak even it’s for few scenes. Shraddha Srinath and Varalakshmi have raised their voice and hand as well   protecting their rights and liberty as advocate and love affair of Kathir (of Kirumi fame) who played Vedha’s brother. Shraddha is a wonderful choice for the wife of an encounter specialist, acted pretty and though working again him their not let down relationship was impressive.

Through Vikram Vedha, Pushkar and Gayathri (the director duo) has touched an extremely high level and also raised the expectation which I’m sure going to give them more pressure to retain the success, although I don’t believe well done movies are the best. Alike everyone else and being concerned on the interesting screenplay, the songs and music doesn’t take attention and the BGM also resembled Miruthan.

Vikram Vedha - a nice suspense movie to watch in theatres and it’s a blockbuster already. 

Turned 32

My dear ones arranged for a mid-night birthday cake and I had no idea they planned to surprise me, but I found it when my parents delayed to go to sleep even the time crossed 11 pm. My cousins residing in next street came with the cake minutes before to 12 and it was a small celebration of cutting cake by just six of us. It was a little moment of happiness to be share and I’m glad for them to turning it into special. Following is a collage on the moment :

Quick bath by babblers

The Yellow Billed Babbles visiting the birdbath has become regular, though I don’t check them out daily, I’m sure they are there almost every day and if not for bathing, at least to take few sips and forage on the gain we left on the compound wall. I hang a birdfeeder outside my home but these birds (and any other birds) ever took seeds or grains from it, perhaps the height or getting balance through the feeder keeps them away but babbles being mostly forage on the grounds with short flights expecting them to pick from feeder is not possible.

A bang usually marks the arrival of the babblers and the noise increases when they are near the birdbath. Yesterday a couple of monkeys came drinking water from the birdbath, scattered the grains all over after filling their mouths, the babblers were on the ground again to pick grains. The grains were kept on a plastic bowl and they didn’t touched it last few days, but now going on ground to pick from muddy.

Usually I take photos, but this time I also tried a short video on the birds with quick dips. Follows the video:

Linking this post with SATURDAY CRITTERS

Delete a Photo

One of the difficult things for me was to delete a photo. Taking photos isn’t pretty easy for me but the passion keeps me engaged and clicking while traveling in car is really difficult though I try my best taking clear photos, many go out of focus or shaken when in move. I know this is a normal thing to happen with normal people, but what matter was deleting those taken with great effort. I used to take many photos during my travel and back at home I had to filter/delete many photos that weren’t good to maintain space in laptop.

During the travel we capture many interesting places, moments and sight, but not everything comes under well focused and deleting it for some interruption is really difficult.  By this way I hold lot of photos and some were quite blur that no one could identify except myself who experienced the shoot and the picture continue to be a reminder of the moment or significant of the place or subject. We take random shots on things to be deleted, later keeping the good ones but the thing was coming to the term of deleting we continue to like the image for some reason.

Few such photos are here where I have no mind to delete. First one was cropped from a picture and i was impressed by the scene but it was gloomy and bit more grainy, so I applied oil paint. Second was doped in same, where the focus went wrong, instead on capturing the pretty colourful temple I only got blur as the focus went on steering. Not to forget it was drizzling outside. 

I ever over edit my photos or want to showcase what is not there and I believe editing of any photo works only if there’s something in the picture. I’m using Photoshop from very long time and my editing of photos always remain mild with brightness contrast, exposure, sharpening and reduce noise but these help hand only to a level. I just want to show how it really looked rather adding extra effects. Now I started to experiment with photos that went wrong and its really interesting to play with various filters which I don’t use mostly. 

A brief on my vacation

I’m back from the vacation two days before and it was indeed a wonderful trip/time except for couple of my cousins and aunt/uncle who couldn’t make up to the vacation. We spent 8 nights at my uncle’s woodhouse/cottage in the Kodai hills or half-kodai, what Thandikudi is called and it is one of the longest vacations I had in my life apart staying at our close relative’s house during school days. Unlike last year we planned this trip earlier due to one of my cousin’s college reopening but at last they postponed the opening, so we went along our family 3 days before my uncle/aunt (who owns the cottages) arrives.

A new woodhouse being build up by the uncle at the Serene Woods

As usual this time too (staying from my uncle’s woodhouse/cottages, the Serene Woods) I got to explore and experience some new place and routes to keep it interesting. By this travel I have covered all motor accessible roads to Kodaikanal, though it was a link road for about 35-40km, I felt  awesome taking  this road that take me through some pristine falls sight and  environment that many unaware about. I’m someone always look forward for something new and different even if the destinations were same to make my travel interesting. I explored couple of mountain villages taking a road less travelled, with scenic mountains and fascinating houses to view.

Winding though woods and forest

During my stay I visited the Berijam Lake, in the wildest part of Kodaikanal, after a gap of 8 years. I have been to the placid lake area couple of time in the past and I truly love the enriched natural environment of flora and fauna. We went through really a tough experience obtaining permission to visit the lake as it was in a protected area, though there wasn’t trouble in getting permission but we were a bit careless to become exhausted. Other day I was on my favourite road (Dindigul to Kumily) to visit a scenic village on the foot hills of Bodi aka Bodinayakanur and it was a popular shooting spot where the Tamil movies Kumki and Myna has been shot.

One of the scenic roads i traveled

I always prefer for a relaxed travel and plan according to it because I couldn’t over strain myself and I can’t check various places at a time. Thanks my uncle for building a woodhouse/cottage on the lap of mountains bestows me with abundance chances of exploring various places around the Kodaikanal, Dindigul and Theni regions. The woodhouse and cottages named as Serene Woods, is a fabulous place to stay and relax and enjoy nature at bay. Amid the woods I truly enjoyed having breakfast listening to the sound of birds unlike watching TV at home. It was blissful spending time with cousins at my favourite environment of woods and visiting places around. 

More on the vacation and travel later… 

Jacaranda at full bloom in Nilgiris

During my travel to Nilgiris, popularly known as Ooty, in April we were treated by the blue flowing trees at many places which was like giving an addition coat of blue to the Blue Mountains. The tree is widespread across the mountains, but we saw them in large numbers around the Coonoor and Wellington Cantonment.

Jacaranda tree bloomed at Wellington Cantonment

Jacaranda tree or Blue Jacaranda is an ornamental tree grows up to 18 meters and is popular for its clusters of fragrant purple trumpet shaped blossom that blooms from March to May. The blue jacaranda has been planted in almost every part of the world where there is no risk of frost; its bark is thin and grey-brown in color, twigs are slender and slightly zigzag in light reddish brown color.

This one was shot at Kundha on way to Manjoor town

The flowers are up to 5 cm long and are grouped in 30 cm panicles, appear in spring and early summer and last for up to two months. Each flower blooms with a five-lobed blue to purple-blue corolla and few species have white flowers. The fruit is an oblong to oval flattened capsule containing numerous slender seeds.

A   collage on Jacaranda around Coonoor and Wellington

There’s a city in South Africa called Pretoria and is popularly known as The Jacaranda City due to the enormous number of jacaranda trees planted as street trees and in flowering time the city appears blue/purple in color when seen from the nearby hills because of all the Jacaranda trees. 

Ps. Off  to mountains for a week... will post and check blogs once back from vacation.

Linking this post for Floral  Friday Foto 

Athikadavu, popular for linking with Avinashi

Following our night stay at Sathyamangalam, we headed to Athikadavu on the way to Pilloor dam and then to Ooty. Athikadavu is a familiar name in Tamil Nadu which stands for the long pending Athikadvu-Avinashi project, which is a dream of the dry regions of Coimbatore. Before going future let see how to reach the place. Athikaduavu is 29km from Karamadai, which lies between Coimbatore and Mettupalayam, but as we coming from Sathyamangalam we directly reached Karamadai without going to either places.

A old broken bridge is seen across the bhavani river at Athikadavu

Athikadavu is a place where the Bhavani River re-enters Tamil Nadu after flowing into the neighbourhood state Kerala. The Bhavani River is sourced at Upper Bhavani in the western catchment of Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu. The water flows through Athikadavu is stored at two reservoirs (Pilloor and Bhavani Sagar Dams) on its way before merge with Cauvery at Bhavani Kuduthurai. The Athikadavu-Avinashi project is dated back to Kamaraj regime, while he was chief minister of Tamil Nadu during 1954-1963; it was initiated at 108 crore. But the project ever took place.

Athikadavu Bridge across the Bhavani River

The Athikadavu-Avinashi project is always in talk of politicians propaganda and the activists continue to  fight in supporting the project which is estimated to be more than 1100+ crore, now. It was during the Kamaraj regime where most of the dams in Tamil Nadu were built. And many of them were engineering marvel. The intention of this project is to bring the surplus water from the Pilloor Dam, to the high and dry area of Coimbatore, Tirupur and Erode districts through artificial channels and existing streams to fill up the ponds and lakes to recharge the groundwater table.

The right side view from the bridge on the river and thick foliage leading to pilloor dam

Like I said above, the Bhavani River which originates in the Nilgiris of Western Ghats receives extensive rainfalls during the monsoon seasons and Pilloor Dam was the first to open its shutters due to heavy downpours, which floods the regions around the river seriously. Athikadavu being a backwater region of the dam and geologically located upward comparing its surroundings, achieving the water could be done just by means of concrete traps. This project is believed to bring a revolutionary change in the fields of agriculture, human livelihood and industries of the western part of Tamil Nadu.

A small Bhvani Amman (goddess) temple at Athikadavu

Actually my intention was the check the Pilloor Dam but only after reaching the first forest check post, at the foothill where informed that public is restricted (temporarily) to enter the dam and forest adjoining the river. The road via Athikadavu leads to Ooty, but it was an unusual route that I want to explore for some time and I ever thought it could happen very soon. As I was unsure about the road condition, we had initially planned to go to Mettupalayam and take the Ooty main road after visiting the Pilloor dam but the guards at the check post promised the road was good after certain distance.

A narrow mulli forest road, the elephants could hideaway anywhere

There are three forest check posts on this route and the Mulli check post come bordering with Kerala state, from where one road leads to Pilloor Dam and another to Kerala. We stopped at the Athikadavu Bridge before passing the second check post to capture some photos on the river and forest aside. The road is quite a single lane till Manjoor and passes through thick forest, where elephants frequent. But the road wasn’t good for about 20 kms and seems to be not relayed for decades.  

Dog racing a Horse

During an evening at Palavakkam beach in the neighbourhood, few weeks back, I got to see an interesting scene where a dog racing a horse.

The horse rider was running the horse on the beach sand, perhaps to attract customers or training the horse; a dog was chasing the horse and also overrun the horse to stop where it was. The dog should be either his own or coming from the kuppa (fishing village) nearby. They went for about couple of rounds around the beach sand before went afar.

I leave you with few more beach photos back from that evening for your views. Happy Sunday

 

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Friday Review: Vanamagan, the Son of Nature

After the success of Tamil horror comedy flick Devi, director AL Vijay is back on his path of unusual he left with Madrasapattinam and Deiva Thirumagal. Though Vanamagan isn’t impressive as the former ones did, I really want to appreciate him for taking different subjects and experience things. For a tribal role Jayam Ravi isn’t new, as he already done one in Peranmai but what makes difference was he comes from remote and expresses emote instead of dialogues.

Vanamagan (Tamil movie) is about how modernisation and industries destroys the forest and disrupt the tribes who adopt nature as their belonging… but wished the movie adjoin this subject strongly rather moving around cities for first half of the film.

Plot:

Kaviya is a very rich girl and orphan, growing under guardian of her uncle, is carefree and enjoys life on her wish. During a holiday in Andaman Island with friends, she broke into a protected area and accidently hit a tribe by the car. Seeing him bleed, they took him to hospital and later brought to Chennai for further treatment without let know anybody. Back to conscious, the tribe Vaasi got into violence and she was force to take him home, where she learns about the tribe’s behaviour and try to control him. At a moment things went wrong, Vaasi was caught by police and shifted to Andaman where they tried to kill him, but Kavya interrupt and they both escape into forest. And what remain answer everything.

Features:

You can’t keep away the thought of Tarzan or George of the jungle even looking at the poster or trailer, where Jayam Ravi hanging from a root. For Ravi, his body, look and height are apt to the role of Vaasi (Kattu Vaasi), an indigenous tribe unexposed to outside world. But his role as tribe there isn’t much action for him to do or we to feel adventure or we lack interest to watch it as we have seen similar movies earlier… the humour isn’t that much fun or interesting.

Sayyehaa as Kavya is beautiful and captured my attention through her dancing skill than her acting! Perhaps the songs were choreographed by Prabu Deva who’s also called as Indian Michael Jackson. She tried to be beautiful with her expressions and being shown as senseless on things   and turning positive all of sudden doesn’t suit her well or she did about. Thambi Ramaya did little bit comedy and his eagle map line is good.

The film captures the beauty of caressing here and there and the feeling of touch, the real one, which has almost lost in the gadget world, is perceived well. Stroke arrows on animals on television, watching through car sunroof and the tiger fighting like Captain (Vijayakanth) and the tribe on-board to Chennai all makes senseless and boring. Feels the director has approached the movie from a common perspective rather studying well about tribes of Andaman, to give more emotional detail to the subject.

Music is by Harish Jayaraj and Vanamagan was his 50^th composition… the songs were good to listen and the cinematography is wonderful and captured the beauty of forest and waterfalls so well. But the BGM is a bit old charm and is tuned for African forest instead of Asia, which I feel has a distant tone. While I appreciate the effort put by the team to give a different experience and explore a world at its brim, could have scored an interesting screenplay rather applying Hollywood shades.

I feel Pulimurugan is better than Vanamagan! 

Peace

(Click to enlarge)

Garden Lizards Clash

Other day I got to see two Oriental Garden Lizards fought at the courtyard and the two clashed ferociously and before come back with mobile to shoot the fight, they climbed upon the Neem tree, in front of our home, while continue to fight. They fought for about a minute or two and run to disappear behind the neighbour’s compound wall.

The Neem tree is also belongs to the neighbour’s but outgrown into our courtyard. In the collage above you could see the lizards in different action postures and the one in right above sees them chasing in rotation manner. The Oriental Garden Lizard or Changeable Lizard is an agamid lizard found widely distributed in Asia. It is generally a light brownish olive color, but the lizard can change it to bright red, to black, and to a mixture of both.

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