My First Time Lapse

After making us (DESI) New Englanders (lol!) wait quite some time for snow this winter the weather gods finally decided to make it up to us on the Christmas weekend and threw in a freaking blizzard.

To capture it all on camera I decided to do a time lapse video capturing the view of the blizzard from the window of my home. So I charged the batteries for my Canon A 590 IS , copied the CHDK stuff to the memory card along with the intervalometer I wrote and rigged everything on the handle of on the handle of my window door.
The resultant video below is the result of my first attempt at this so go easy on me. :)

Yeah , I know you can't really see a bunch of car head lights after the first few seconds and you can see the light inside my house reflecting off of the window glass too. But ,hey this was only my first time !

These are the tools I used for making it if you'd like to try it yourself some time.

• I used my Canon A590 IS camera with CHDK, any high end camera[DSLRs] can be used or you can use most Canon point and shoot cameras with CHDK to run the Intervalometer script. 
• I used a intervalometer script I wrote myself but I found out there are free and better  intervalometer scripts out there. Here is one which should work for most cases. Ultra Intervalometer by

  Keoeeit.

• I used PhotoLapse 3 to combine the stills to make the video but I guess you can also use windows movie maker but PhotoLapse 3 gives better quality and more options.
• Also used Youtube's video editor to add some music and that's pretty much all you need.

Best of luck if decide give a it a try , hope your video turns out better than mine.

Too Much Excitement for One Week-End

After a 7 month stint at 47[D] Crystal Brook Way I moved out to a new apartment in Marlborough; 12 Royal Crest Dr.
I had to move out as the owner at Crystal Brook Way was expecting his parents from India for the next couple of months. Hence on 25th April 2009 I packed my bags after returning from office on that Friday and called Rajat to come pick me up as he was already living in Royal Crest. On reaching my new home I just dumped everything in my room and had some food and went to bed a little early at about 10PM as I was too tiered after all the packing and moving. My other roomie had some plans for the week-end so he left with his friend.

Wake Up call!!
The morning I woke up to a loud knocking sound on our door.At first I was very angry/irritated as to who the f***k is this guy knocking so loud so early on a Saturday morning.As I was walking towards the door I was slowly getting my senses back and realized there was some kind of alarm that was going on. I was surprised to see a Big Fat Fireman when peeped through the doors peep hole. He said " Sir, You have get out of the apartment right now, there has been a fire in the building". With out fully realizing what he was saying I instinctively grabbed my cell phone and keys and rushed out. On my way out I could see black smoke coming out of the basement but no flames though.

Thank God for the Smoke Alarm
Upon reaching to the front of my building I saw two fire trucks , 3/4 police cars and all the residents of my apt standing on the road[The pics posted above are real life pics, taken with my cell phone camera]. I went to a person and asked How did the fire start? he said " I don't know there was some smoke in the basement which triggered the smoke alarm and notified the fire dept." I used get annoyed with the smoke alarms complaining [read going off] for every little speck of smoke coming out of the kitchen like when I made a "chapati" bit too crispy in the morning while making lunch or giving a "KADAK tadka" to the Daal etc. OK, I agree is was more than a speck of smoke but I still thought it to be a nuisance rather than a life saver as it turned out to be for the residents of 12 Royal Crest Dr on that fateful day. All the desis staying in my building were all praise for the smoke alarm, me included.

The Culprit.
After 2 cold hours outside the fire officers allowed us into the building after they cleared up all the smoke and put out the fire source. When I re-entered i went directly to the basement to see what had caused the fire. It was the dryer in the basement. Seems like some one was trying to save one buck on dry cleaning and had put in woolens inside the dryer in spite of the printed caution[in bold RED fonts] not to do so.Due to the hot air the woolen cloths melted and jammed the dryer and that caused the machine to spark /fume and hence the smoke and fire. And from the half burnt cloths lying there ; it was anybody's guess that fool was a DESI.

Lesson learned : "Don't dry your woolens against the caution in the basement dryer unless you want to burn the house down."

Why does an egg burst when cooked in microwave oven?

I think you'd have already guessed it. :) I did it too. Turns out a lot of other people before me have experienced the same Kaboom!! in their microwave oven on some morning or other while boiling eggs for breakfast. I guess it was my turn to learn that lesson that day.

Due to pure laziness or lack of attentiveness I put 2 eggs in the microwave this morning set it to cook on high for 15 mins and went on to read the news on Google while finishing my cereal.

Seven mins later I turned back to a loud bursting noise in the microwave.The damn machine was off, I opened the door and shit! there was warm gooey egg slush all over the place. I quickly grabbed the kitchen towel and sucked it all up.

Once I was back from office I sat down to find out why the hell it happened? As you'd guess I looked for answers on the net. And yes someone had already asked the question so here goes the answer:

"Microwaves transfer heat to water molecules. In this case the water molecules are in the egg, enclosed in the shell. when the water boils - which it does - it creates steam inside the egg shell, and that builds up a great deal of pressure, until, **SPLAT**"

Now I also remembered that it had happened to one of my friends Luqman not so long ago and he had told me about it.But then again I am that kind of a person who has to burn his hand to learn that fire is hot.

But all you people can learn from my experience or better still go ahead try it yourself it works. :)