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http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=10959 Three entrepreneurs in San Diego, who are in the final throes of launching a company that will offer software development off the coast of California—three miles outside Los Angeles, to be specific. The three plan to buy a used cruise ship and station it close enough for a half-hour water taxi ride to shore, but far enough to avoid H1B jurisdiction. By stationing the ship in international waters, the company, called SeaCode, will be able to remain close to U.S. clients while picking and choosing IT talent from around the world—something that tightening H1B visa requirements have made difficult…

Last week my Sony Ericsson T610 totally gave up on me. The phone is going into this infinite reboot cycle and nothing seems to change that. This phone is probably the worst electronic device I’ve ever used. The UI is non-intuitive, the joystick hurts the fingers, the navigation is just way too slow and the reception is terrible. I’m currently using an old Nokia 3310 and man this phone rocks. The navigation is lovely and the speed at which I can look up address book etc is amazing. I really wish Nokia came up with a 3310 & bluetooth &…

I know, I know everyone will hate me after reading this, but here goes… While coming back from safari today evening we noticed a mongoose cross the main road and slip into a small hole. After coming back to the resort, me and malini (naturalist intern) went back to this spot in my car to see if the hole was its den. We got to see the mongoose and got some decent shots too. Just when we were about to turn back, a jeep come by and they told us they had seen a tiger some 10KM down the road….

So I finally got the much needed permission and managed to stay in the forest for a while. To start off, We (me, malini and narayana the local tribal guy) went there at 7pm and it was quite dark already. I parked the jeep on the road, about 10m away from the kill and waited. Last week I bought one of those LCD lights which you can strap on to your head and use for night treks and stuff. I thought this was a good time to use the new light, so I put it on my head and switch…

This morning while going on the safari, we caught a carcass of a large gaur (indian bison) only 20% eaten by a tiger. Unlike last time, this dead body is very close to the safari game track. I know the tiger will come back tonight to eat the rest, so right now the plan is to stay there all night in the forest and hope to film/shoot the tiger when it comes to eat the kill. However, I need a special permit to stay there past 7pm and been trying to get that all day today. Let’s hope I get…

Baba Dioum, a naturalist from africa once said: In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught. This I think is the key to conservation anywhere in the world and this is what all the wildlife photographers and film makers should work for. (Sandesh, thanks for the quote)

A forest fire broke out today right behind the camp. We still don’t know who or what caused the fire, but atleast we managed to stop the fire before it did too much damage. We were lucky to get advance warning from the forest guard who was watching from top of a hill. Since there were no forest department folks at our camp, we (employees of the camp) rushed to the spot and started to fight the fire. Since this forest is very thick, it made our job very tough and all of us got burnt and bruised while we…

Things have been very hectic. I’ve had three more good leopard sightings after the last fight. Infact, there have been so many sightings, I have started to name each of the leopards. This leopard is now called Rocky the 3 feet leopard. Since I’m seeing so many of them, I have even started to predict them etc. Generally life’s good in the forests 🙂 Been in Bangalore the last two days. This place had changed quite a bit in the last few months. There are lot more one-ways, lot of new restaurants and traffic situation seems to have actually improved…

Had got to see one of those, ‘Once in a lifetime’ event here in the forest. There have been quite a bit of leopard sightings here, but earlier this week I spotted a leopard, one of the top predator of the forest, being hunted down by a pack of wild dogs. What most of the people do not know is that, the wild dogs are the most brutal and effective killers in the forests. People have even seen them attack a tiger and eat it up. Normally a tiger’s success rate of a hunt is about 30% while the wild…

Leopard’s are second largest predator in these forest. They are more effective then the tiger because of its light weight which makes it more agile and gives the cat the ability to climb trees. They are also more adaptive to varying terrain and availability of prey (which is why you find them even in Mumbai). They are found like this on top of trees as it gives the leopard a chance to escape the other predators like the tiger and the wild dogs. ( Click on the image for larger version ) Wildlife photographers are always greedy. No matter how…