Uncategorized

This is the second time this week I’m up till 4am and still not able to sleep. I had this issue a while back and looks like its acting up on me again.

I voted last week. It was an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM). It does not have a paper trail. Something smelled fishy. I do not trust machines. Shudder

The photograph I posted yesterday was the Draco, The Flying Lizard. Click here to see the lizard marked out in the bark. These small lizards live in trees and are found along the Western Ghats. They are masters of Camouflage and if they are sitting on a bark without moving, its almost impossible to find them. On land they are clumsy and easy victims for predators. When scared, they run up a tree. When threatened, they leap off the tree. With their “wings” stretched out, these long-tailed, lightly built lizards glide gracefully. The wings act like parachutes. They gently land…

There really is a lizard sitting on this bark Answer : You can compare the original with this one to find the lizard. Try to find it yourself before you look into this link though.

A lot has happened in Valparai since I last posted about the captured leopard. We did a bunch of press releases in the local news papers and it seems to have been well received except for the fact that the article appeared on a day when another leopard picked up a small girl in a tea estate and killed that girl. People of course were angry which prompted the forest department to deploy traps in and around the area where the girl was killed. Last week, a young leopard was captured around that area. Anand, the NCF biologist who deals…

For a long time a lot of people have been wanting me to do this, so here it is. I am organising a 2-day Digital photography workshop here in Bangalore and the first batch is on the 2nd week of May. Check for more details here. If you are wanting to get into photography or have just started using a DSLR, then this is a perfect course for you. It’s also scheduled on a weekend so you do not have to miss your day job.

Doing a press release here in Valparai with the images to tell people the leopard’s side of the story.

I’m currently in Valparai, Tamil Nadu doing some work with the Nature Conservation Foundation folks. Lot of events this week, which I shall write about later. Few weeks ago, an old lady was injured from what was reported as an attack by a leopard in this town. There was no conclusive evidence, but the forest department was pressurized to setup Leopard traps outside the town to catch this Leopard. Valparai is surrounded by Tea estates and forest fragments and leopard sightings are quite common. Anyway this morning we got a call that a leopard was caught in one of the…

After living off borrowed laptops and desktops for a month, I’m finally back online. I’ve given my Thinkpad for servicing at a nearby computer place who said he would be able to fix it for Rs 10k, but I’m still waiting on it. Meanwhile, I decided to switch and moved to Mac. Its been exactly a decade since I switched from Win 98 to Linux and now moving to Mac has been quite an interesting transition. I just managed to get all the things running in the mac and since I do a lot of photo editing, I think I’m…

I had made a quick trip up to North Karnataka for few days last week. On the 1st day of the trip, my laptop (Thinkpad T41p) screen flickered for a bit and after that just refused to boot up. I got back and gave it to the IBM service center for repair and have been keeping my fingers crossed as I just ran out of the 3 year warranty period. Today they get back to me and say the motherboard is busted and they will charge me Rs 50,000 ($1200) for replacing it. Thats right, almost the cost of a…