Bryan Adams concert in Limassol, Cyprus

We are going to the Bryan Adams concert, supposed to be the biggest ever concert staged in Cyprus. The concert is being held tonight at the Tsirion Stadium near the Limassol Highway. This is my first ever live concert. Vidhya tells me that she is a big fan of his music and there is no way we could have missed this concert. The only time i have listened to live music was during the Rock Shows back in Pilani. I have never survived the loud music for more than 15 minutes. Lets see how this concert turns out. Hope to take some photos. If i do manage, i shall post them early next week.

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Volleyball Collage using the Burst Mode in Nikon D-70

The Volleyball event is currently going on. After having been eliminated in the first round, i had nothing else to do but to take photographs. Below is a collage (Not exactly a collage, but a layering of different photos) of photos taken with the burst mode. I put 5 photos on top of each other in photoshop and deleted sections of the them such they give a continuous feeling to the action. Wish i had captured one more in the sequence where the person takes the service. Today is the final and I am going to attempt to take a long sequence.

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Dogs, no sex please!

Sign posted outside a bakery in Limassol, Cyprus

The Cypriots love their cats. They are all over the place. The cats even have a monastery for themselves called the Cat Monastery. But, the poor dogs, they don't even have the basic rights! God save them!

Surf's up - It's Wednesday - Edition 1

Usually many bloggers do their weekly round-up of interesting links on a Sunday. It is difficult for me to do the same, as Sunday is probably one of the busiest days of the week for me, as i try to spend as much time as possible outside the house savouring the creations of nature. So, i have decided to share the interesting finds of the week on a Wednesday!

1. Point Blank by Vikram Nandwani. In Vikram's words, "I am doing custom caricatures to try & raise money for a Community Conservation Project in Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra". His caricatures are funny and thought provoking. I have posted two of them below. Go over to his site for many more.


2. Photos of Kaipu(Poras Chaudhary). Digital Camera Magazine's Photographer of the year 2006 winner, Poras' photos are a cut above the rest. The richness of the colours in his compositions have to be seen to be believed.
3. California Coastline Photos. Aerial photographs of the entire coastline of California. If you are planning a trip/trek to any of the coastal beaches/areas, then the photos on this site will help you evaluate the place before you actually visit.

That's it for this Wednesday. Happy Surfing!

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Extremecy - Cyprus x-games

Extremecy event happened over the weekend in Limassol. It included all kinds of shows and competitions for bikers, skateboarders and people attempting anything else which normally sane people wouldn't attempt. I somehow forgot about this event, as i had also last year and ended up watching only the closing stages yesterday where some skateboarders were fooling around on the ramp. Below are some photographs taken by Puneeth who had been there earlier in the day.

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Intro of Rajini in Sivaji

There has been much talk about Rajini's intro in the movie Sivaji. Unlike his usual dramatic entrances in his movies, his intro in Sivaji seems to be very ordinary, which I am sure will give rajini fans something to discuss about.

If you are searching for youtube videos of Sivaji or online versions of Sivaji, i guess that you shouldn't be able to find many. I heard that people who upload camera prints of movies onto the internet have had an informal agreement with the producers of Sivaji that no Sivaji torrents (if that is a correct phrase, for i have never downloaded a movie off the net) would be uploaded within the first week of the release.

I got the link to the video of the intro scene by email. It seems that this was taken with a mobile camera in one of the theatres in US. The quality is surprisingly excellent. Enjoy the intro and hope this prompts you to go to the theatre and watch the rest of the movie even if that means you have to wait until July. I am going to India in October and I am sure that the movie would be running in theatres until then. I want to watch the original Sivaji in the theatres and not one of a crappy quality on a computer.

Watch the intro of Rajini in the movie Sivaji here. (a 27 MB download for a 75 sec video)

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Photo of Venus near the moon

Heard from a friend that Venus was visible very close to the moon. So, rushed home to take a photo with my D-70 and 70-300mm lens. The photo below was taken around 8 pm Cyprus Time. Yes, you could argue that i just took a photo of the moon and added a dot with photoshop :-)

I have taken better pictures of the moon in the past, like the ones below. If you are interested in taking good photographs of the moon, check out my tips and tricks for better moon photography.

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Rajini in Sivaji the boss scores a home-run

so say the people who have seen the movie, in US of A style!

Some comments/reviews from people around the globe:

• "Sivaji is a Rajini film directed by Shankar and not a Shankar film starring Rajni"
• "For every 'cool' dialogue that Rajini mouthed, there were whistles, trumpets, claps, yells and the adrenaline was constantly pumping. Well, that's what you get from a Rajinikanth movie and that's worth every penny you pay and more!"
• "All the expectations has been satisfied.... Thalaivar Rocks in the movie... Excellent projection of Rajini by director Shankar.... Really Hats off for him"
• "Awesome performance by Rajini. Looking younger by decades as though travelled by a time machine, Superstar looks ravishing and has given out a spell binding performance."
• "A R Rahman's songs have already stuck on to the top of the charts and would sure stay on for some more time with the visuals out now"
• "The high points of the first half however must be the songs. Balleilakka simply rocks; theaters are going to reverberate with fans, every time this song unfolds on screen"

As regards the story, the full storyline is out on many places on the internet. I am sure that you don't want the plot revealed, unless you are the masochistic kind! Here are some pointers regarding the story of Sivaji

• Rajini is a US return and wants to transform India into a developed country. Well, the truth is, even if Rajini wanted to do that, it is impossible with the current state of affairs in India!
• The first half is filled with humour...The second half is action-packed, all about Rajini and the villains
• The climax is easily the best and the most exciting part of the movie

Btw, there has been a frenzy over Sivaji related searches during the last few weeks. Some of the search terms through which people have visited my site: "Story of SHankar's Sivaji", "Shivaji Rajini", "Rajni Sivaji Photos", "Sivaji the boss pics", "rajini interview", "rajinis movie shivaji preview" ,"movie shivaji pictures", "sivaji movie in seoul", "mottai sivaji rajini" , "is sivaji a superhit?"

The strangest search being "in movie sivaji rajini dies?". Can that happen? I don't think the masses would allow that :-)

Enjoy the movie to know more.

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Blog Hosting for Dummies

If you are reading this, there is a good probability that you already have a blog up and running. There is a high probability that it is either on blogger.com or wordpress.com. If you are really interested in blogging and not started a blog just because the guy in the next cubicle did, it is time you thought about moving out of blogger and wordpress to your own domain and hosting it with any hosting provider. Following are excerpts from a fictional book "Blog Hosting for Dummies" which was written fictionally by me sometime in the past. Click on the picture to the right to see a bigger picture of the cover of the book.

There are many advantages of moving to your domain.

• You have an identity of your own on the internet. http://www.srajaram.com/ definitely sounds better than srajaram.blogger.com
• You can have your own email ids on your domain. I don't use this option, though :-)
• Search engines rank (SEOs say so) content on domains higher than that on free hosts. So, your writing might receive a bigger audience.
• If you intend to make money through your blog, having your domain is a better option as blogs on own domains are preferred over blogs on free hosts by many ad networks.
• Buying a domain costs just under 10 USD a year and this small investment or rather the lack of could prove very costly in the future in case you end up becoming really famous!

Of course, moving to your own domain has its share of worries

• Where do you host it ? There are hundreds of companies offering hosting and which one do i choose?
• Hosting a site costs $$$. Currently, i host it on blogger and it doesn't cost me a cent.
• Blogger/Wordpress never goes down. What if my host goes down and my site if offline for a long time?'
• I don't know HTML !! How do i "write" pages then ?

I hope that this post would cover most of your apprehensions about hosting your blog on a platform other than blogger or wordpress. The easiest way is to buy a domain name and redirect it to your blogger blog.

I buy my domains at GoDaddy. Their interface is clean and clear. They also offer a free hosting package where you can host up to 5 pages. Of course, the godaddy ads appear on these pages. One thing about buying hosting plans with free domain names. Avoid buying the domain name through the hosting company. You never know whether the domain is really yours or registered under the hosting company's name. Domains are cheap, buy them yourselves.

I am assuming that you are planning to "buy" your hosting package. Firstly, these are things you need not worry about when looking for a hosting package i.e not look at what the company says on its pages

• Support providing by the company. Almost all companies say that they provide 24/7 support. Don't trust them. Search around on google for " support" and you might find comments by people who have had first-hand experience with the support from the company.
• Uptime reliability. I have never seen a hosting company give a figure less than 99.5% uptime. Do a similar search on google to find out the reality.
• Type of hosting. 99% of the blogs go for Shared Hosting which is the default. If your blog is really popular or you expect it to have hits in the range of a few million a month, then you should go for a dedicated server i.e. dedicated hosting. Dedicated hosting costs bigtime $$$.

Things you should be concerned about

• Space provided. Actually this is not much of a concern as most hosting plans give at least a GB of space which is too much in my opinion for an ordinary blog. Of course, if your blog primarily contains photos or videos, then you might run out of space fast. What i do to avoid this situation is that i upload all my photos to Google Picasa Web and then link to it. I don't know whether this is perfectly legal, as i know that it is not with flickr. If you have videos too, why not put them on youtube or the numerous other clones and just link to them?
• Bandwidth. If your blog becomes super-popular, then you need to worry about it. If any site says "unlimited bandwidth", then be assured that they are lying. Any bandwidth in the range of 100 GB a month is more than enough. I never thought that i would reach this limit, but it happened with this post on Aishwarya Rai's wedding pictures. Also check with the company about their exact policy on this. My hosting company told me that, for my plan, the bandwidth shouldn't exceed 1MB a minute.
• Number of domains, sub-domains, number of email boxes. These aren't really a concern for the novice blogger. But bigger the better. I am yet to create a sub-domain on my domain, but i know that i get x sub-domains free.
• Databases. If you are planning to install wordpress as your blogging platform on your domain, then this should concern you. Make sure that the hosting company doesn't charge you extra for mysql databases. Most packages offer them free. I haven't used any database until now for my website. Of course, if you are geeky, go ahead and try!

If you don't want to get into the hassle of writing HTML or installing wordpress, just create your blog in blogger and post the pages onto your domain, which is what i do. I hope that this small article helps you a bit in establishing your blog on your own domain. At the end of it, if you want to “Win a year’s worth of hosting at BloggingTips.com” , just enter the competition at BloggingTips and hope that you win. If i 'Win a year’s worth of hosting at BloggingTips.com' , then i shall probably introduce the Cyprus Blog. In fact, I am planning to make the switch for my Hindu crossword blog to its own domain soon, by hopefully winning the competition on Blogging Dosh.

If you want to blog daily, but don't find the time for this on a regular basis, Ms.Danielle's blog site has an interesting tip for busy bloggers (applies to wordpress users).

If you like this article, digg it by clicking this button

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Superstar Rajini's Sivaji is a super-hit

So says the media, even before the movie has been released. The ticket sales for Sivaji opened on June 10th and within half a day, all the seats for the first week had been sold out. No, we are not talking about seats in one theatre, but in 18 theatres, more than 10,000 for a single show. Rumours say that the earliest date for which you can get a ticket now is sometime around mid-July! With such numbers, no wonder that Sivaji has been declared a hit. By the way, if you want to book tickets for Sivaji online, go here.

Every day, new photos of Rajini from Sivaji are being released adding to the excitement of his loyal fans. I am surprised that Chennai Central, a die-hard fan of Chennai and everything associated with it has nothing to say about Sivaji on his blog. Thennavan, where are you ? I am sure that you would have more inside-information on Sivaji...

Read shankar's complete interview here. See more photos of Rajini in Sivaji here.

Take the poll below to let the world know your opinion whether Rajini's Sivaji will be a superhit!

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More pictures from Rajini's Sivaji and director Shankar's interview

Director Shankar's interview to SUN TV is probably (IMHO) the most detailed interview he has ever given. He talks about Sivaji, Rajini, his career and whatever his fan might want to know about him (ok, depended on what was asked of him!). Check out the complete transcript of Shankar's interview here.

Also, i have uploaded some more stills and photos from the movie Sivaji showing Rajini in various outfits. Enjoy!

Do you feel that Sivaji will be a superhit? Take the poll to let the world know!

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Rajini in the movie Sivaji - pictures, photos, news and the story

Everyone is talking about Rajini's new movie, Sivaji - The Boss (or is it Shivaji?). I was just getting too many emails about this new movie that i couldn't resist creating a post on the movie. So, i went forth a created an exclusive page on the the movie Sivaji. This page would have all the latest pictures from the movie, news about the movie and (according the the email i got), the story of the movie!

I am sure that you would be looking forward to see the movie, but until then, enjoy the stills from Sivaji, the trailer of Sivaji and lots more on the Rajini in Sivaji page. A small sample below!

Do you feel that Sivaji will be a superhit? Take the poll to let the world know!

Technorati Tags: rajinikanth rajini+sivaji sivaji+movie shivaji+rajini+movie kollywood shriya+rajini