The Recaptured Blog

Phra Buddha Theva Patimakorn

Post author By Amit
Post date March 26, 2016

yourshot.nationalgeographic.com/photos/7993762/

The Phra Buddha Theva Patimakorn in the Phra Uposatha, the ordination hall, the main hall used for performing Buddhist rituals, and the most sacred building of the complex. It’s a 13-exposure composite of the statue, taken with the Nikkor 105mm/2.5 lens.

Tags Bangkok, Buddha, Thailand, Wat Pho

6 points Cinema

6 Points: Dawn of Justice

Post author By Amit
Post date March 24, 2016

Here’s me starting a new series of posts about new movies I see. I’m going to write down the top 6 things I feel or think about the film. These won’t be reviews, just what I think. You’re free to take them to the bank if you wish, but don’t ask me why the tellers are laughing at you.

We didn’t sit through the entire film. During the interval we just decided we should save our precious time and go home to watch Friends reruns.
All the characters are flat. All of them. This includes Batman/Bruce Wayne, Superman/Clark Kent, the only sarcastic Alfred, Lois Lane, and the perennially angry editor Perry White.
Lex Luthor’s character is the only one with some semblance of depth, but he’s like a lukewarm weird-tasting cup of tea when you were expecting a cup of chamomile.
It seemed like I am seeing a story with three villains – Batman, Superman, and Lex Luthor. And the only character I could root for was good ol’ Alexander.
Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are both like high school rivals, trying to undermine each other through whatever means they have at hand. It looks stupid and boring.
The most enjoyable part of the film was the awesome trailer of Suicide Squad. Now that’s a movie I am looking forward to!

Tags Dawn of Justice, film, not a critique, not a review, six points, Superman vs Batman

Divinity Photography Travel Travel Photography

The Reclining Buddha

Post author By Amit
Post date March 21, 2016

yourshot.nationalgeographic.com/photos/7971225/

From a temple that existed before Bangkok was established. The 46 meter long Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, Bangkok was built under the reign of Rama III in 1832.

Tags Bangkok, Buddha, Buddhism, reclining, Reclining Buddha, reclining_buddha, ultrawideangle, Wat Pho, watpho, wideangle

Landscape Photography Photography Travel Travel Photography

From the Moon

Post author By Amit
Post date March 18, 2016

500px.com/photo/145036761/from-the-moon-by-amit-sharma

Bangkok as seen from the roof of the famous Vertigo & Moon Bar

Tags Bangkok, cityscape, landscape, night, Vertigo & Moon Bar

Animals Photography Street Photography Travel Travel Photography

Proud Ram

Post author By Amit
Post date March 17, 2016

yourshot.nationalgeographic.com/photos/7946089/

A fighter ram we encountered while on a street shooting excursion in Calcutta, safely of course. He was well trained, listened to his master, and rammed into only objects that was asked to hit.

Tags brown, Calcutta, fighter, Kolkata, Mullickghat, ram, sheep, street, wooly

Music

Jab Bhi Koi Kangna Bole (Cover & Chords)

Post author By Amit
Post date March 16, 2016

This is an R D Burman song that I heard when I was digging for more of his albums and songs – beyond the Amar Prems and the Sholays, and instantly fell in love with. Simple chords, simple rhythm, and a simple melody make it irresistible.

Only once I’d recorded this cover did I come across the “original” for this tune – S D Burman’s Nitol Paye Rinik Jhinik. Even though son has taken inspiration from father’s song, both versions have their nuances and occupy their own special place in my mind and heart. I just wish I had heard SDB’s version before I recorded this – maybe the output would’ve been slightly different. Oh what fun it would’ve been!

Here’s me singing the song – the recording is a year old now.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/152481019″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Here are the chords if you want to play and sing along:

Jab Bhi Koi Kangna Bole (1982)
Music: Rahul Dev Burman
Lyrics: Yogesh

[G]Jab Bhi Koi Kangna Bole, [Em]Payal Chhanak Jaye
[G]Soyi Soyi Dil Ki Dhadkan, [Em]Sulag Sulag Jaye
[G]Karu Jatan [A7]Lakh Magar [G]Man, 
Machal Machal Jaye, Machal Machal Jaye [Em][G]] x 2
Jab Bhi Koi Kangna Bole

[G]Chhalak Gaye Rang Jaha Par, 
[A7]Ulajh Gaye Naina Re [G]Naina, [A7]Ulajh Gaye [G]Naina - [G][Em][Am7][G]
[G]Paye Nahi Man Banjara, 
[A7]Kahin Bhi Ye Chaina Re [G]Chaina, [A7]Kahin Bhi Ye [G]Chaina
[G]Mere Man Ki [A7]Pyas Adhuri, Mujhe Bhat[Em]kaye [G]
Jab Bhi Koi Kangna Bole...

[G]Kali Kali Jhoome Re Bhawra, 
[A7]Agan Pe Jal Jaye Pa[G]tanga, [A7]Agan Pe Jal [G]Jaye
[G]Chanda Ko Chkor Nihare, 
[A7]Isi Mein Sukh Paye Re [G]Paye, [A7]Isi Mein Sukh [G]Paye
[G]Jeevan Se Ye [A7]Ras Ka Bandhan, Toda Nahi [Em]Jaye [G]
Jab Bhi Koi Kagana Bole...

Tags chords, cover, Hindi हिन्दी, Kishore Kumar, r. d. burman, Shaukeeen, soundcloud, Yogesh

Landscape Photography Nature Photography Photography Travel Travel Photography

Rice Fields

Post author By Amit
Post date March 14, 2016

yourshot.nationalgeographic.com/photos/7932738/

Labourers in a paddy field, next to the Backwaters in Kerala, India. The paddy fields around the Backwaters/Alleppey are lower than the water level in the Backwaters, and are kept safe from flooding by a low dam running all around the water body.

Tags backwaters, farming, fields, India, Kerala, paddy, workers

Business Product Technology WordPress Work

WordCamp Mumbai 2016 Day 2 Wrap

Post author By Amit
Post date March 13, 2016

WordCamp Mumbai 2016 Day 1 Wrap

—

My favourite talks of day 2 at WordCamp Mumbai 2016, in chronological order:

Naoko Takano (@naokomc) came all the way from Japan (and brought really cool WordPress tattoos for us – you saw a sample in yesterday’s post) to talk about how WordPress became successful in Japan, capturing 78% of the website share. A relevant talk for anyone interested in internationalization and localization.
Michael Eisenwasser (fb/eisenwasser) is the co-founder of BuddyBoss, a company which build products for the BuddyPress ecosystem. Great talk to help us build user engagement using “social tools” on WordPress.
Sakin Shrestha (@sakinshrestha) came all the way from Nepal, where he heads various companies and also manages to host WordCamp Nepal. He introduced the audience to different approaches to developing themes for WordPress, ranging from modifying an existing theme, to building one from scratch, including using frameworks and starter themes.
Darshan Sawardekar (@_dsawardekar) is a Lead Web Engineer at 10up, and a vim enthusiast – to the extent that he is the author of a vim plugin called WordPress.vim. He explained why URLs are important, how pretty URLs/permalinks work in WordPress, what Rewrite rules are, and how we can leverage them to our advantage.
Mahangu Weerasinghe (@MahanguW) is a Happiness Engineer at Automattic, and like Bryce & Sam, I had met him and heard him speak on stage for the first time at WordCamp Mumbai 2015. This time he shared how he, a non-programmer, taught himself to write code on WordPress that lets him do things one step at a time, using action & filter hooks. But beyond just the technique of it, his deeper message was that programming is not only for the math-minded toppers in school – essentially, programming (at least algorithms and high-level programming languages) is language, and similar to any language we speak in with each other – so any person who can communicate well can also code well.

Thus ended my fourth WordCamp and the volunteer stint with it. In the process I had the chance to discuss with great people, some of whom are employees at Automattic, others are business owners in India, some developers, and every one of them a WordPress enthusiast.

Photographs courtesy: Bigul Malayi (@mbigul)

Until the next WordCamp!

Tags 2016, Mumbai WordCamp, WordCamp

Business Product Technology WordPress Work

WordCamp Mumbai 2016 Day 1 Wrap

Post author By Amit
Post date March 12, 2016

The venue was set, the sandwiches, tea, coffee, water was all fixed, the projection on stage, the sound from the laptops, the presenters/clickers were tested, the WiFi worked finally after a couple of hours of tinkering.

After around an hour of attendees walking in, collecting their goodie bags, and walking in to the auditorium after getting something to munch on & sip, we were ready for the talks to start.

WordCamp Mumbai 2016 was open!

This is my fourth ever WordCamp. I was an attendee at the first one (Mumbai 2014), a speaker at the next (Mumbai 2015), a sponsor at the next (Pune 2015), and I’m an organizer/volunteer/<localhost> at this one.

I was looking forward to this WordCamp eagerly, for the quality of the planned talks if not for anything else.

And this is the first WordCamp which was duly attended by the whole 13 Llama Studio team.

—
In the chronological order, here’s my take on what I liked about what went on today:

Shilpa Shah (@IdleGazer, HWS) told us what customers want. It’s been a recurring theme in WordCamps, and rightly so. Developers have been known to not fully understand the importance of dealing with customers with empathy and a kind word. Shilpa delivered the message in her disarming fun way. A great start to a great WordCamp.
Nirav Mehta (@niravmehta, StoreApps) had delivered this session at a WordPress meetup a few weeks ago, which I had missed. Later I heard many good things about it from those who hadn’t. Today I found out what I had missed then. Various insights into the WordPress plugin universe and what an aspiring plugin developer should focus on made this a must go.
Bryce Adams (@bryceadams): I had heard Bryce for the first time in WordCamp Mumbai 2015, and was just blown away with the way he built his case for the famous “decisions over choices” principle. This time he spoke about building Freemium plugins, and how it follows from looking at The Bigger Picture.
Sam Hotchkiss (@HotchkissWeb): Same as Bryce, I had heard Sam last year, and he showed us a very cool picture of the admin panel of the future. This time around, he took us through the best practices for Plugin development. Very thorough, and very enlightening.
I want this printed, framed, and hung on every developer’s desk every where
Karthikraj Magapu (@KarthikMagapu, HWS) in his inimitable style, took Nirav Mehta, Rohan Thakare (@rohanthakare, Wisdm Labs), and yours truly, along with a member from the audience on a panel discussion – the topic being how can growing WordPress based companies get to their first million. As much as it was fun, it was thought-provoking, forcing us to look inwards, and learn from each other. The learning opportunity for me was immense, since both Nirav and Rohan have been in business longer than I, and run larger companies than I.

Photo courtesy: Harshaja Ajinkya
Rahul Bansal (@rahul286, rtCamp) is the god of scaling, speed, reliability, and taking off from his previous talk at Mumbai 2015, he taught us how to make WooCommerce scalable. Entertaining and educative.
Raghavendra: though I missed a major part of his talk, whatever I heard moved me to the core. As a developer, I have always insisted on the alt tag, and warned against the indiscriminate mixing of alt with title in imgs. Today I got validation for this seemingly pedantic practice. But the alt is only one of the things we developers need to take care of while making the web accessible to those with disabilities. And WordPress is the only platform which focuses on accessibility. Yet another reason to be proud of using WordPress and being in the community.
Kshitij Patil (@thekshitijpatil, kshitijpatil.com) is an entrepreneur who has sold web design services for years. And he shared his techniques and principles with the audience.
Saurabh Shukla (@actual_saurabh, hookrefineandtinker.com) delivered one of the most fun, engaging, and moving talks of the day, where he shared his numerous stints with a development career, the failures & struggles, and finally simplified talent retention through the famous Maslow’s Hierarchy of human needs.