Nikhil Dev

Photo stories on 500px

2012-05-17T00:19:00.000-07:00

I've been using 500px.com for around an year and I must say, Iam in love with you. It exactly what I want. Its a platform for photographers and there is no nonsense on it. One of the best features I've seen on it is Photo Stories. Here is the first one http://500px.com/nikhildev/stories/31905/experience-the-grand-funk-generation

The posting is super simple. Just bunch upload the images and write-up. Thassall. It just cannot get any easier.

Powerpacked weekend

2012-05-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

Tons of action happening around now. Shoheb is getting married this weekend I am shooting his Mehndi and Wedding. So that way my weekend is set. Now here is where it starts getting interesting. The wedding is at night and I have a gig to play at Benetton showroom. Well, we are getting paid good so I should'nt be complaining much. But how am I supposed to handle so much action over the weekend? Well, I guess I will figure it out.

Next saturday another buddy of mine is getting married. Its not this that I am complaining about. My problem is everytime I attend a wedding, some lame ass cunt has to ask me when I am getting married. Really? Does it bother you that much? But I guess I am just overreacting.

Its good to take a day off sometimes to get all this shit. Got tons of photos to process, gotta upload more stuff and lot of things to do. Been blogging intervals of a 3 months. There was time when I used to write a post every day ... every single fucking day. Now here I am. Writing just cos I gotta write something. Pfffff! this should do for another few months.

From just a bunch of guys making noise to Upper Basement

2012-02-16T10:53:00.000-08:00

Looks like, a lot of things that I wanted to do this year are going to be done at last. Well, officially we are chosen to play at Hard Rock Hyderabad for the Global Battle of the bands 2012. 2 week of online voting and people did seem to like what happened to be our first Original composition. If you still have'nt visited the band page, find us at http://www.reverbnation.com/theupperbasementub.

A quick preview of how the band started. So we had this India sales conference coming up in December 2011. Me and a buddy Sam Joe thought of performing something this time. Just for the kicks. There were auditions and and all that jazz that goes with it. We got through and were scheduled to play on the final day. So we put together a band with Nirmal on the drums and Kaustubh on bass. The show went on pretty ok. We were off timing for about 80% of the time(blame it on the mofo monitor which did not work at all). But, on the whole we had quite some fun. The music lovers knew we sucked, but on the other hand 90% of the people got to know us. So that where it all started.

Then comes stage 2. Ferdi(Our band's vocalist) showed me this page where Hard Rock put up the notice calling bands to submit their OC for first round of selection. That's when we started working on the first Oc "Monkey with a gun"(not my style, but Ferdi's song). 12 hrs of recording and I should say Sam did a pretty good job. The song was up in record time. 2 weeks of voting and extensive online advertising and we receive the good news. We are selected to play.

So, currently we have 3 OCs under the belt and working on the third one(actually just started today). Moving into a genre that we feel is like heavy grunge but with quite some influence from blues, metal and 80's ballads. Honestly I do not know how to describe it right now. But will keep info posted.

Upper basement and beyond

2012-01-27T02:23:00.000-08:00

Finally looks like we have something on hand. We formed the band to play for one of Google's sales conference. But looks like we are going to take it a lot more seriously now. Monkey with a gun is the first single we composed as a band.

Recently we entered the Hard Rock Global battle of the bands and looks like we are doing pretty good on the ranking part. We are #2 on alternative charts for Hyderabad and #3 band on the voting scale for now. The voting closes on 6th Feb. So having fingers crossed for that.

Moving to Blogger

2011-11-23T02:18:00.000-08:00

Finally I decided to lose all the previous blog content that I had with wordpress and move to blogger. It just makes all the content with my Google account a lot more simple and saves me the money on hosting. Also I love the revamped Blogger interface. Especially the dynamic templates.

Kahani mein twist

2009-09-06T23:47:00.000-07:00

I was previously blogging about how busy my schedule was and how I was struggling to manage it. At last I had to take a call. Cos I just was not able to spend enough time at Google. So just last week I decided to take a break from the club and concentrate more on my work. Although, I will be playing there on Sunday night going forth. There will always be a few days that I might be required to be at the club. I think thats Ok. At least I wont be zonked at work on the weekdays.

Work is at last smooth and I am working my way up slowly but surely. It feels good to start off the workout schedule again. I have definitely lost a lot of muscle weight which I dont like. Apart from this I am practicing my guitar regularly. After all, its in my blood. Its 11pm now and I am kinda tired after a good 70 mins of workout. I think its time to hit the bed a little early. 8 hrs of sleep should do the trick. Yaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwnnnnn!!!!!!!

Things changing for better these days

2009-03-21T23:50:00.000-07:00

I think at last all the hard work is paying off. At the beginning of this week I got a good news that I was nominated for a peer bonus at work by one of my colleague for a project that I was working on. And yesterday, I got to know that my team(Me, Ujjval and Shyam) won the Google Health Challenge. It feels so good. At first I thought my team stood no chance. But in the end we kicked some serious ass. Now the challenge is to keep the same dedication for the rest of the time. I gotta start working on my health. Have to start working out harder. Also, there are alcohol problems popping up again. But this time I am able to control it. I’ve started playing cricket at a friends place. So that kinda gives me the excercise on the weekends.

A good weekend I should say. A little different than the other ones

2009-03-07T22:53:00.000-08:00

I made sure that I had nothing to do other than waste time this weekend. I didn’t take up any party to play at and no other work. It started on a few beers with Mazhar, Nash and Kumar. We were in no mood to drink. The beer was just something to go with the conversation. Its really surprising to know that we always had something to talk about. The “not too much drinking” allowed me to wake up at 8:30 AM on Saturday. A really pleasant, typical Hyderabad summer morning. Bright and the feeling that I didn’t have to go to work. But it got boring simply sitting at home. So I rushed to the LIC office to pay my pending premiums(which apparently, because of my negligence took away half of my month’s salary). I then went straight to Sujith’s place with my guitar as it’s been a long time since we jammed. Reuba joined us pretty soon once she got back from work. So did Sandeep after his cricket practice. The suddenly we realized that it’s been a long time since we played cricket. The last time we played cricket together was more than 5 yrs back. We went downstairs and I should say that I didn’t lose all that pace I had packed in my arm. I still can bowl pretty fast. The line and length were the only problems. But that took just a couple of overs to start getting right. Sujith threw us a challenge that if we could get him out in 6 balls, he would buy us beers. I got him out on the first ball. So then we rushed to Club 8 to join Shoheb, Tillu and Ajit. A pretty good couple of hours with good friends. A really nice talk. I loved the way this weekend was going.

This sunday, I decided not to drink. till about 30 mins back. I took a nap in the afternoon(unwantedly) because of which I will not be able to sleep till 2AM. So I went and got me some Whiskey. Yet to open the bottle. Mom said she wanted to watch ‘Delhi 6′ but in about an hour into the movie, I realized it was pathetic. I mean, my mom can take some of the shittiest movies. But she was not able to understand where this one was going. So we shut down everything. She is in her room asleep and I am blogging after working on a few lines of code. A pretty relaxing weekend I should say. I surely deserved this one.

The weather is very pleasant outside. Cool breeze, the sound of FM radios from far away, a lot of time to waste and nothing to do. It reminds me of Anakapalli. That was the place I was born in. Just that the air was a lot more fresher and cleaner there. I think I love that place.

I should have had some company today to have a coffee with. I recently started talking to this one girl who is pretty interesting to talk to. I think she likes talking to me as well. I am just taking this slow and not really expecting something out of it immediately. I wanna get to know her well. I wanna spend more time listening to her(I bet every girl likes to be listened to).

I gave away this old Motorola Rokr to my mom and it took me a neat couple of hours to explain all the features. She is pretty excited about it though. She is also excited about her new orkut account. She said she saw me on Orkut but did not know how to add me. Now if I teach her that, I assume thats going to be a lot of spying into my personal life

Right now I am restless as there is not much I have to do. I think its time to crack open the bottle. Gotta sleep early to go to office tmrw.