shiv.me

A couple of weeks ago I started a new project – to shoot random strangers in the streets of GVRD (Greater Vancouver Regional Districts – for those of you that are not from here). I wanted to see if I had the guts to walk up to random strangers, and ask their permission to shoot a picture of them. I was also curious to know how they would react to it, and what my success rate would be.

I’ve asked around 14, and 8 said yes. Some of them were not comfortable with their pictures on the internets. I offered them 3 options.

1. Pictures don’t end up on the internet (emailed to them if they send me an email)
2. On the internet for non-commercial purposes.
3. On the internet in public domain.

Only 2 were ok with public domain. The rest opted for option 2. One didn’t want it on the internet at all.

It was an interesting experience, and I’m looking forward to more such excursions. For the lack of a better name, I chose to call this project : People of GVRD.

Suggestions are welcome. Do you have a better name for the project? Perhaps, thoughts on how I should approach people. Do you think I’m insane? Apart from photos, would you be interested in a short blurb about the person? What would you like to know?

The above is also cross-posted to google+

A few weeks back, I installed Alex King’s Twitter Tools for wordpress. Running it for a few weeks, I found that by lack of posting to my blog, became more apparent that earlier. There are now more “twitter” posts than the number of posts that I have written myself in the last year or so. How pathetic is that?!

Looks like I have almost lost the need to say something (about anything) and it is about time to shut down this blog. However, I intend to give it another shot (one last time), before I stop hosting my own blog, and move to life-streaming instead (You can already find my at shiva.tumblr.com).

There are few projects that I have started working on (in my off-time ofcourse).

1. Read-later

This is a clone of instapaper, written primarily for my own use and to learn django (as I find instapaper, rather limiting). Some features I intend to add include, cross-posting to twitter or del.icio.us, full-feed RSS to enable reading in Google reader. This isn’t as yet, production ready, in fact it is in its early stages.

2. Un-named java app framework

A framework for running high-throughput java based servers, allowing staged-processing of actions. The framework also provides resilency to failures, low-impact live logging and debugging.

3. Ex-SideRSS

An extension of sideRSS, that allows for displaying and customising RSS feeds for displaying in your wordpress sidebar.

Do check back atleast every week and hopefully, I will be able to find time to add more coding related posts. The plan is to post stuff that I learn about C/C++ development on unix based systems.