Sunday, August 08, 2010

Perfect...

The setting sun was low, just inches above the sea. It was perfect. If you want perfect, watch sunsets – don’t break your head looking for it elsewhere.

Posted via email from Mahesh's posterous

Saturday, March 06, 2010

The Oscars Online!

This year experience the 82nd Annual Academy Awards Presentation online. The official site of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which awards the Oscars to those who have achieved excellence in various fields of film during the year can be found here

You can watch the Academy Awards 2010 online and see red carpet live stream video and photos from the 82nd Oscars on Sun. March 7, 2010. Hosted by Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, the annual ceremony starts at 8:00 p.m. ET live on the U.S. ABC broadcast channel from the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, CA.

ABC will also be streaming live red carpet beginning at the same time. You can watch the ABC Live Web-cast.

The E!Online red carpet live video can be found here

CNN Live will also cover the event.

You can watch it on the iPhone also.

You can become a fan of the Oscars on the Official fan page on facebook.

The Official Oscars YouTube Channel will stream the event live on March 7, 2010 (8 PM ET/5 PM PT),March 8, 2010, 6:30 AM IST.

Here are more options for watching the event. and more resources can be found here.


Some live blogging sites for the event which will be covering the event


The complete list of Nominees for the 82nd Academy Awards can be found here.

Enjoy!

Saturday, February 06, 2010

My First Blog Post via Posterous

This is a photograph taken in 1925, of the only surviving wagon used in the first train in 1825, then preserved at Darlington works. This and other such photographs adorn the panel of the Deccan Queen on which I am travelling from Mumbai to Pune.

Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

Posted via email from Mahesh's posterous

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Clever By Thirds

Perfection comes at a price. At times so high that by the time you are done paying it you may just barely catch a dying glimpse of your endeavor that did finally end up seeped in perfection. The question is where do you draw the line? Do you draw a line at all? Does the reward justify the effort? Is there a reward at all? Why the hell am I asking all these questions?

If you need perfection, go look at the sunset. If you need to get on this world, go out there and wing it the best you can. Nobody really gives a damn. You gotta do what you gotta do to get what you want to get.

Over and out.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Turning publisher

For those out there who want to look at another great tool for publishing their work and building a community around it try Scribd.

Scribd is a document-sharing website which allows users to post documents of various formats, and embed them into a web page using its iPaper format. Scribd currently has more than 50 million monthly users and more than 50,000 documents are uploaded daily.

I have used it to publish some of my work. You can view some of my work at http://www.scribd.com/maheshpatwardhan

Friday, July 24, 2009

There's a High Tide a-coming !!

Today was High Tide Day in Bombay. Exactly at 2:03 p.m it was to be High Tide reaching 5.05 Metres.

Normally I do not think that too many people pay any attention to the comings and goings of the tides - high, low or otherwise. I suspect a good many are completely oblivious to the fact that such a phenomenon exists. They know that theres a sea out there, a moon and the earth that we stand on - but beyond that I doubt very much that they would have considered that there could be a relationship between these.

But in these last few days we have been so inundated with the news that a big, huge, MONSTER high tide was coming our way that every inhabitant of this great city of ours and his uncle now know that there is more to that sea out there than it lets on.

The local media has had a field day (when do they not have a field day?) Schools were declared shut weeks in advance, some offices worked last Saturday as a precautionary compensatory working day, travel advisories were relayed to potential travellers from far off places, and notices were put up in housing societies advising one and all about the great coming! And no one, unless absolutely essential, was to wander out.

Today arrived and all that was supposed to be done was done. The schools remained shut, the University put off some examinations that were scheduled for the day, roads around the beaches were cordoned off, life-guards were posted at important beach locations, armed guards too. The Media began the countdown to the great event. I watched it on TV. There was a lot of water - the sea usually has a lot of it. There were a lot of people thronging vantage points, there was traffic stopped on the road, and there was the Media all excited about the highest high tide coming in man's recent memory. Some said it was the highest this century, some said it was the highest in a century. Whatever.

I could understand the excitement of the media. Medical science has advanced to an extent where today you can surgically implant it in them. But what puzzled me was the countdown to 2:03 pm - what exactly was supposed to happen at that moment? The way they were going on it almost seemed as if at that precise moment there would be this huge big MONSTER tide thing that would come charging in off the sea and gobble up all the helpless people gawking at all the water around! I guess that explained the armed guards hanging around - to protect against such an eventuality!

Well 2:03 came and went, and I couldnt see any monster. The media guys couldnt either but that didnt stop the excitement in their voices (the implants doing their job). They went on about the exciting spray of water on their faces and some other things I couldnt decipher.

So there you have it. The day of the High Tide in Bombay City. Monster or no monster, one thing was sure - there was major water pouring out of the ears of the people who lived near the water on the beach fronts. And for everyone else, it was the words High Tide !!

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Whats beyond Plan B?

Have you ever wondered why there is always only a Plan B?

Why not a Plan C, D, E or more?

Says a lot about the confidence mankind reposes in itself. I will never need more than a plan B. Whatever needs to be taken care of Plan A will handle, if that dont happen, then plan B will see me through. No one, not you, not me, not the fat pig on a farm somewhere on this planet, ever think beyond a Plan B.

Ever wonder why? The why is that we are a very smart, highly intelligent and extremely capable race absolutely able to handle whatever it is we need to handle with the help of at the most two plans. Hence plan A, which most of the time, is all that is required. And sometimes, when in a moment of temporary insanity or acute disorientation we lose our bearings, we need to fall back on plan B.

But thats it. Beyond Plan B, the frontiers of our knowledge end. Beyond that there is nothing. And nothing is something we do not want to have anything to do with. So, there you have it. Plan B is where it all ends. At least as far as we as a collective race seem to know.

Now there may exist a plan C, D or more. If there is, then those who have used them are a very rare breed. Very rare from being either very dead or wandering the other world as some vague astral bodies.And from them there is very little that we will learn.

So, for now, and for some time into the foreseeable future, Plan B is all its going to be. That smart, deep thinking, highly intelligent fallback mechanism used by you, me and those fat pigs on a farm somewhere on this planet.