kinshuk sunilit aint no, dessert if therez no caek

Mid-Day did an interview with me on one of the community Initiatives I am working on – Indie Game Development, India, Community. The interview is included below:

Gaming is no more a waste of time, it’s serious business. and even if it isn’t, who cares? Living by this law are the members of a freshly formed community DiningCamps. Its founder Kinshuk explains the highs of the game

Not many understand that online or console games develop intelligence, skills and decision-making power.

Especially, IT administrators give video-gamers a hard time because they consider gaming applications as a wastage of space, conducive to viruses and obviously and impedence to Internet speed.

They realise that these very geeks are probably much smarter and creative than you. Here comes a group of game developers who not only want to shed all the myths about gaming, but also give it a corporate twist.

Over to Kinshuk.

Read full interview on Mid-Day website. OR read the scan below (click on image to full view the article)

Been working on a musical album for about a month now – Indipop + Sufi (possibly). Its been a lot of hush hush as yet and is still going to be. Playing a marketing role, looking at how Social Media can be best utilised in the scenario, will soon talk about what and how we are doing stuff.

I am also looking at how best to go out with an indie album – yep, not planning to release the album through some big publishing house. The artist’s first album came out from the T Series stables but the experience was not that too rosy. Heck! Even the copyrights for the songs are with T Series, the artist can’t work with them on Last.FM or anywhere else.

Also, a first for me – I am writing the lyrics for some (at least) of the songs. Not that I can boast of my lyrical prowess, but if the artist finds it good enuogh to sing, I guess it is good enough to listen to. I’ll soon be sharing a couple of songs I have already written for the album – your feedback will be much appreciated.

Just recorded one scratch track for the album one fine day. This song will not see the light at the end of the tunnel though. Titled “Itna Bura” the song is very bad :D Just the end result of a weird rickshaw ride with Yadu Rajiv. And yes, the voice is mine. Please don’t flame me ;)

While, we are still talking music I will also like to draw your attention to some instrumentals made by me. Not so great, but an attempt by me – some are really nice and I like them. Find them on my Last.FM Artist Page. They all are available for free download as well. Feedbacks on them (comments and shouts on last.fm) are also welcome. I am also working on my second instrumental album “Into the Night“, the title track is already on Last.fm. Some other tracks have been delayed due to my system’s bad PSU issues. The first album was “In my dreams“. It is a compilation of extremely short instrumentals really. Nothing very inspiring.

More Later!

Afterlife is a science fiction novel I am working on. Currently in talk with some publishers (do recommend me to some if you find it worth it). This is an old copy of the initial 3 chapters as old as 2006. Will soon update with more details. Matrix and Harry Potter are acknowledged inspirations :)

Afterlife tells the story of Rahul Sharma, a prodigious software engineer from India, working for the best Virtual Reality company in the world. During his researches and his work, he designs a powerful neuro-electric simulation program, which is soon licensed as a successful MMO. The company, though, in their greed overlook common development wisdom and rush through the development cycle. The long and winding road soon brings Rahul on the crossroads where the interest of his family will conflict with the benefit of the world. he has to choose his own path, forge his own destiny. He is no hero.

I was away on a family trip for the last 5 days. A long pending tasks before commencing the journey was to clean my bathroom, which I finally managed to do some twenty minutes ago. While cleaning, I gained enlightenment – understood some life’s reality due to the very process of the cleaning. I share some five lessons from that enlightenment. Remember, cleaning the Toilet is an allegory to the real life here.

1. Its easy to be shitting around, but when you have to clean your own shit you start getting responsible with it.
It is very easy for anyone to spread the dirt – back-bite, bitch about, scams and spams, etc but when you have to clean your own mess you start realizing what a pain it is. End result, the next time you shit, you know how to do it in a responsible fashion so that you can do the cleaning up later and not get dirty.

2. Don’t mess up with stains that you cant clean, you will only get dirty.
OK! When you start the cleaning up remember there are some stains, some grime that you cant clean. You just don’t have the skills yet. When such is the case don’t mess with that stuff, you will only get dirty and achieve nothing. Similarly in life, you are not supposed to do everything and work at everything. Know your domain or you will be nowhere.

3. Not all grime can be cleaned by you, leave the tough ones for the experts.
Refer to point above. Not everything can be done by you. You don’t have all the skills – you are good at something but at the cost of being not-so-good at something else. Don’t waste your time and efforts doing stuff someone else can do better than you. Concentrate on what you can do best, let the rest of the stuff be tackled by specific experts.

4. If you make mistakes, some scarring will always happen.
It was never a good idea to let the dirt settle over time. When I let that happen, I make a mistake. The better approach would have been to be pro-active (being lazy doesn’t help) and run a continuous process of cleaning which wouldn’t let stains set. Now that I made the mistake, no matter what I do, I wont be able to get rid of everything. Some scars will always remain. So in life, think before you act. Watch out, before you make a mistake. For once you have committed it, there is no turning back and damage control won’t be complete. Some scarring will always happen.

5. No matter how well you clean it, it will never be 100%.
No matter how well you clean the grime, some one will be able to find faults with it. No matter how much time and effort you put into things, there will always be people who are not satisfied, who criticize. It will not do good to waste your efforts in pleasing them. It is not humanly possible to please everyone. So don’t waste your resources trying it. Learn to move on and learn to heed only to those who count. Don’t get dejected, disappointed. And next time, make a better attempt. Learn, Grow, and Evolve.

Now that the sermon is over, let me rest. Coming up next are tidbits from my recent trip and a rant on how infrastructure still sucks in India and what can be done about it.

Kinshuk

My existing company business cards suck bigtime (and thankfully I am out of stock). So I need new cards, and I tok the opportunity of getting a new design altogether. So I asked my dearest friend kitty aka yadu to design em some. Unfortunately for me he is out of ideas and time, but is trying his best to help me out. He infact designed quite an unconventional business card but that needed some tweaking. Inspired by it, I picked up GiMP 2.4.5 (these days I am running Fedora 9 Live) and set about the task of designing me a card.

Ideally, a designer should work on what is a very crucial conversation starter – one’s Business Card. But the heck! I have no designer. So i have to trust my logic and my understanding of stuff that is around to do so.Below is the card I finally made. Lets call it Draft 1.

Business Card - Draft 1 (Click for Full View)

Now, I’ll attempt to discuss its features and describe why I think it is good. Feel free to contradict me at any point (don’t forget to log it as a comment).

• For some reason, I have always believed that a business card should always be minimalistic. Carry only what is essential, do away with all the crap.
• It should be different. Business Cards are very strong conversation starters. Something different, something unconventional, something uncommon are great tools to break the ice.
• It should be YOU! Its your card isn’t it? And it talks about you – who are you, how to reach you; right?
• Don’t waste the backspace. A lot of cards don’t use the backspace. True! Most Cardholders don’t show the back space, but when you hand out the card, the person will look at the back too. Dont miss a chance to create an impression.

Go on now! Sort out that itch you have; post a comment…