Fitness Tracking

Through last night I was running ideas in my head about the best possible way to do the edit on the scenes that we shot over the weekend and the first thing I did this morning was wake up, switch on the computer and attacked the edit with a gutso. I managed to finish doing rough cut on 3 scenes over a 3 hour period and decided to take a breather, so went and brushed my teeth and as I came out of the bathroom I got a scare as Lance was standing there. He seemed pretty excited and he immediately asked me if I had heard about the Tsunami warning for NZ. I said no and he asked me to check out the news - basically a tsunami hit Samoa and it was on it's way to NZ and the whole country was put on a civil defence alert.

I couldn't get back to edit and needless to say it was exciting and frightening at the same time because of the constant news updates about the status of Tsunami. And because of it I couldn't go back to edit and I was almost about to cancel my fitness test but then I decided against it and did go in for the test. The results were surprising {because I had reduced the intensity of my workouts by half over the past 2.5 weeks because of workload} and encouraging.

My weight is 63.7 KG {downward movement of almost 3.5KG}; Body Fat %age is 16.5 {down 1.5% & almost close to my target of getting it down to 15% by end of the year}; Blood pressure is normal; VO2 Max levels are at 49.8 [up 0.5] at Level 15 {while the last test was at Level 11}. So overall improvements in all areas and now just have to see how this 1.5 month break impacts on it. Plan is to see if I can find a gym near where I'll be, so that I can atleast maintain the fitness levels - if not improve them during that time frame.

The tsunami alert was cancelled at mid-day and big waves didnot hit NZ as it was feared but reports coming out of Samoa show that they are pretty badly hit because of it. Just shows natural disasters can strike anywhere, anytime.

Simon, Lauren and me had a fantastic workshop for our storline yesterday and it is going to be good - kind of ties everything together pretty nicely in terms of themes that we are exploring in the movie. Tomorrow I am acting in a short film - a small but fun part. And on Friday, I intend to finish off the rough cut on the remaining scene that needs to be edited before I am ready for the holiday.

That's me for now.
Amit

Weekend Shoot

I am currently feeling drained and exhausted but very happy at the same time. We had a fantastic shoot over the weekend and we got 5 scenes done over a 4 hour period spread over saturday night and sunday afternoon. Day light savings kicked in this morning and we've had to move our clocks forward by an hour - which meant 1 less hour of sleep this morning and I guess that's added to the exhaustion.




I am happy because the performances from Simon and Michelle were spot on and the scene between Simon and me went really well too. I am really looking forward to finishing off the rough cut on those scenes before my trip to India. I also managed to do a rough cut of the scene between Tarun and me and the down side of it is that we'll have to ADR the whole scene because the location audio is unusable because of background music.

Overall we have 10 scenes in the bag and it is scary to think that I have been operating a camera on 6 of those scenes. It isn't too bad I guess - considering that we are shooting in a dual camera setup and the workload is being shared by several other people on each different shoot {and I am competent at camera work I suppose - at least I won't have anyone else to blame if I screw up the footage }. We've got another 12 scenes odd to shoot and I guess that's something that I'll be going full steam on once I come back from India. In the meantime though Michelle is work shopping and developing scenes with a couple of actors while I am away to speed up the process. And we have locked down on one of the scenes between Lauren and me while the workshop to lock another one down is due this tuesday.

I have a full week of night shifts this coming week - which will give me the time for the rough cut plus as an added bonus my body clock will be closer to Indian time- a great way to prepare for the trip I reckon. :-) That's the update on the movie for now.

Till later,
Amit

Samsung N140 Review

I received my Samsung N140 yesterday after paying GST and customs clearance - which added about 13% to the cost of the product but overall it is still cheaper than many of the older netbook models that are on the market here - thanks to the great exchange rate of the NZ dollar right now. The overall delivery has been very fast even though the shipping originated in UK and the package went through Germany, UAE, Singapore, Thailand before getting to me - total of 7 days from the point I placed my order to having it here in my hands.

I couldn't really play much with it last night as I had an acting workshop for the movie [which incidentally went really well and the second story thread of the movie is so much more defined now] but have spent a good chunk of the day today with it and I am loving it. My first impressions are that the build quality is fantastic and it feels very solid and looks classy - the model I ordered is in white, so the outside cover doesn't pick up finger prints {or atleast you can't see them}. The display screen is non-glossy which is fantastic as I don't like screens that reflect so much to the point where it is hard looking into the screen, especially wherever there is any bright light source directly behind you.

The first couple of times the system seemed slightly sluggish - mainly because I was coming off a Precision M60 with 4GB RAM. But I soon started tweaking the netbook settings from information available across the internet and right now the system is very fast and responsive. Some of the key things I have done are: turn off bluetooth, turn off LAN, uninstall McAffee antivirus amongst other things and these things alone have speeded up the system heaps. Here is the main article I used to tweak behind the scenes settings on the OS - which is very helpful.

Battery life is pretty good, especially comparing it to the fact that my Precision lasts me 2-2.5 hours tops. I have used the system on and off through the entire day and I am currently typing this particular blog entry from the netbook and it still has another 4 hours of battery life remaining. The keyboard is comfortable to use and typing is a breeze. There are a couple of keys which are not to my liking - mainly because it is setup as a UK keyboard but the niggles I have about that are very very minor. And the system doesn't seem to generate a lot of heat and neither does the cooling fan kick in as often as my other notebook.

The technical specs are pretty standard for a netbook - Intel Atom N270 processor, 1 GB RAM, 160GB HDD, 10.1" screen with Windows XP Home. It does come with a 1 year free trial of MS-Office 2007, which is handy as I am using the same software on my other machine and it makes working on documents seamless. Samsung is planning on releasing this particular netbook in US later in Oct/Nov with Windows 7 installed but at this point in time this is the standard configuration. Don't know what the status of Windows 7 on Netbooks is in terms of what impact it has on battery life etc, so at this point I am pretty happy running a winXP machine.

The reason I bought this netbook was not to replace my grunty Precision M60 which I use to edit stuff as well but to use as a secondary laptop that I can carry with me - especially when traveling, so that I can still keep working and also be in touch with everyone. So overall I am pretty happy with the purchase and looking forward to carrying it around with me on my travels. I'll test my usual work flow - that I have of working with images from my digital camera, on this laptop and report back on my findings about it soon.

Till later,
Amit

UPDATED:
Here are a couple of pics of the N140 and needless to say the workflow is even more smoother than what I had before and that is because of the inbuilt SD/SDHC card reader on the machine. I used irfan view to adjust contrast and resize the image. Irfan view has a really small memory requirement [especially compared to GIMP] and does what I want it to do with minimum fuss + it is free.

Side view

Front view

I also installed Skype and everything with it is working fine - the webcam, the audio etc. That's one additional thing I can do on this netbook that I still can't do on my other laptop for some strange reason.

A Taste of Japan

On Saturday I went to an event called 'A Taste of Japan' held at ASB Showgrounds. It was a fascinating event. It was a real insight into Japanese traditions and the only event I watched start to end was Japanese Archery. The ceremony and the protocol that they follow is amazing in the sense that it is very meticulous and very slow.

Archers preparing to fire their arrows

A female archer fires her arrow

The archer's bow

After the archery session - I roamed around the hall taking photographs of people learning how to write in japanese and learning japanese crafts like origami and then there was a tea appreciation ceremony that I just photographed instead of sitting through it - since I am planning on doing something similar in Hong Kong.

The unwritten word

Learning to write

Hands and alphabets

Origami

Children learning japanese art

A mini japanese art exhibition

The tea-making ceremony

Japanese make awesome food - I usually consider it snack food because it is never enough to fill me up. :-) The number of japanese food stalls and different kinds of food was amazing and the smells were fascinating and the best part of all was that they were all reasonably priced.

Japanese savoury pancakes

Preparing the food

Steely exteriors

It was a good outing and I wish there were more multi-cultural events like these happening on a regular basis and that'll probably drive the point home that New Zealand is turning out to be a truly multi-cultural country where everyone just integrates into the overall society while still keeping their own culture well and truly alive.

That's me for now,
Amit

Slowly but surely

I finished the rough cut of the 2 scenes that we shot recently and now planning to shoot 4 scenes next weekend but it seems all up in the air. Those of you who know me will attest the fact that I plan for things - well in advance and I then execute the plans within the time frames set but in this case it is hard work doing your end of the work and then waiting on someone else to do their share of work for the plan to go through. Needless to say it is slightly frustrating when things don't get sorted despite everything you do and say. So fingers crosssed that the shoot still goes ahead.

Rough cut duration of the 4 scenes that I've edited till now is about 25 minutes and we still have a good chunk of the movie to shoot. The target is to have a refined rough cut of the entire movie completed by end of Feb'2010. In the meantime I talked to John Davies at Arkles Entertainment and he has committed to a DVD release of the movie based on my previous track record, so atleast there will be an outlet to get it out to a bigger audience rather than just sitting on my laptop.

Thats the news from the movie front.

Later,

Amit

Netbook

Netbook - yeah - I am actually writing something called a netbook. If you are reading this blog then you obviously know what a net book is but incase you don't then - in simple terms, netbook is a poor man's laptop used primarily for light work while on the move. Laptops tend to be grunty beasts with the battery life lasting you a good 2-3 hours before they fizzle out and then there is the matter of weight - they are heavy bastards -weighing anywhere upwards on 3KG's. Netbooks on the other hand have a small screen - meaning smaller body and they tend to use non-energy intensive processor which aren't as powerful as fullspeced laptops - which in turn means that your average battery life would be anywhere between 7-10 hours depending on what you are using the netbook for. And the best thing about them - they weigh under 1.5 KG which means you can carry it in your bag without bothering too much about developing a right leaning shoulder. To read more about netbooks - click here.

Anyway the reason I am writing about netbooks is that with the upcoming trip to India where I am away for a month and a half I was tossing up with the idea of lugging my faithful old Precision M60 around with me but somehow it didn't feel right. One of the reasons being that it is pretty heavy to carry around and second I am using it right now to edit 'The Moments In Between' and I would hate for anything to happen to it which would prevent me from completing the movie. So I started looking at netbooks with the main purpose being so that I could work on stuff {including working on my assignments for the business leadership course} while I am away without having to rely on someone else's system and also to use it for keeping in touch while travelling. So after weighing up the pros and cons and financial status I decided that the wisest thing to do would be to buy a netbook.

After a fair bit of research I narrowed down to ASUS 1005HA and Samsung NC10 - I veered towards Samsung because it had a non-gloss screen and as I was about to buy online {Samsung doesn't sell netbooks in NZ for some weird reason} I found that they had just released an improved version of NC10 called the N140, so I went ahead and bought it. Another week and it should be here - just in time for my upcoming journey. I could have bought it in Hong Kong but they apparently sell only netbooks loaded with the chinese version of Windows - which would have become a slight issue in the overall scheme of things. :-)

So here is fingers crossed that it comes through quickly.

Later,

Amit

Booked

One more step to reality - I booked my air tickets and the intrepid journey that I want to do in Borneo next year. I know it is crazy that I booked next year's holiday already but I couldn't let a 20% discount on the tour price + a very good price on the air fares slip away. So now I am counting down to this year's holiday as well as next years one. :-)

I was clearing out my emails and found this email {from a few years back} from a cousin that I've never met. In it she said "Although we have never met, I heard a lot about naughty little Amit from ammamma [grandmother] and tatagaru [granddad], when you were very very young. So, I had an image of you as this very young boy and I almost had a shock when I heard about you and what you were upto. I guess kids do grow up. " This got me thinking - I wonder if I have ever grown up and if I am still naughty - my perception is that I haven't really grown up [mentally that is - :-)] and I am still cheeky at times but not naughty any more. I would love to meet the younger version of myself just to see how naughty I was.

UP is a fantastic movie and it was even better watching it in 3-D. It is funny, touching, beautiful and above all well told. It's got some serious themes running through it and I am amazed that the director and PIXAR didn't flinch away from them. Watch it - even if you are put off by the hype surrounding the movie.

We filmed another scene for the movie on Wednesday night and we cracked through the scene like a breeze and I am really happy and thankful to everyone involved. Now we have another shoot coming up on Sunday afternoon and looking forward to it. A big thanks to Rosseanne for lending us her camera, so we can still keep shooting with 2 cameras. Here are a couple of screen grabs from the Wednesday shoot.





That's me for now.
Amit

Sunny Weekend

It was a beautiful weekend and I spent doing pretty much nothing - which was a relaxing change of pace from my usualy busy-ness. Saturday spent time taking some pics and then editing the scene that we reshot and on Sunday went to Piha again with Julia. And that's pretty much the extent of the weekend. Here are some pics from the weekend.

Graffitti

The Tide went out

High and Dry

Roadside vegetable vendor

Beautiful day at the beach

A couple strolling on the beach

Lion Rock reflected

Walking on reflections

Surfer attacking the waves

Footsteps

Family Outing

Exploring the rocks

At peace

The car park

Later,

Amit

The cat that....

Well this is one of our neighbours cats that shits in our front yard but the only one who is brave/social/crazy enough to come onto our deck to take cat naps - especially when it is nice and sunny. This particular cat is pretty inquisitive and pretty but still afraid of getting too close. Maybe I need to name him/her or something. A unisex name!!! hmmmm....

The cat

It was a beautiful day today and since Simon was on the machine getting his head around editing the scene we shot between Tarun and me, I decided to go for a wander around the city to take some pics and here are the results.

A lady taking an afternoon walk

Godzone

Auckland - City of Sails

A guy running past the art wall - which has paintings by school kids

Stairs to Infinity

I finally have a weekend off in ages and I intend to do nothing for most of it - let's see how that plays out.

Till later,

Amit

Relief

Phew!!! The footage from the re-shoot has been digitized and it is a big relief. The footage from the 2 cameras mostly match up in terms of color as well as framing and I am surprised that my camerawork wasn't too shaky. I'll do an edit of the scene tomorrow or maybe the day after. I am on night shifts all this week and that definitely gives me time during the day to carry out the edit.

Colors for a bleak world

Auckland

My current state of mind

With the trip to India looming real close, I was looking at subletting my room for the duration in order to save on some of the costs of having a holiday. Luckily Zoe - one of my old acting classmates was looking for a place to live for short term and she took up the offer on my room, so it is a relief to have that sorted and out of the way. She came over to look at the room this afternoon and as we went out for a coffee, we bumped into Serena - another old acting classmate and all of us caught up about things over a nice cuppa and it turned out to be a much needed social outing before work for me.

Coming back to the re-shoot - the scene will obviously be different in terms of the tone and visual style but I am hoping that it'll be as engaging as the first time. Keeping fingers crossed for the edit.

Later,
Amit