PC Paint Job

I was never into painting stuff. But those guys on discovery channel doing custom paint jobs on cars and bikes always amazed me. The wonders they make with spray paint and tape are simply fascinating. So for a long time I had it in my mind to try and do something with spray paint, and I wanted to customize my PC's casing! After grooming the idea in my head for a long time, I bought a can of red spray paint and some masking tape about a couple of months ago. But still I couldn't get painting, until recently. Only a few days ago, I finally did my first paint job on my PC, after going through a couple of test runs of course. I had a tough time deciding on the design. I kept drawing different patterns on a pad and finally I made up my mind on one.

 

The casing taped up and the design cut out. The design shows "A-19".

I did it like the pros. I taped up my PC's side panel, drew my desired pattern, cut out the part where I wanted the paint to be, and then unleashed the spray paint. I did read some important spray painting tips on the net before going for it, and the tips really helped a lot.

When I finally peeled off all the tape from the casing, the finished product was really satisfying. It's just an ordinary single colored design, but for me, who has never painted anything before, it was a good start. Thanks to Allah, I did something new in my one week summer break.

Widescreen Bliss

[I don't know why, but recently I'm feeling a strange reluctance to sit and write here. Not that nothing noticable is happenning, but I just don't feel like putting them in words. Anyway, now that I've finally got myself here, let's get to the topic]

I've always had my eyes on my big bro's LCD monitor. It's nothing extraordinary, but I always knew it would be a great addition to my PC gaming experience, as so far I was playing games on my old 15'' monitor (4:3). A few weeks back, my bro got a Sony Bravia LCD TV as a wedding gift. I couldn't wait any longer. I plugged in his PC to his new TV, and took his monitor for myself!
The monitor is a 19'' widescreen LCD monitor from Philips. It's not high end or anything, but it's 16:10 ratio, 1440X900 display is indeed a fascinating addtion to my rig, and it was probably the upgrade I was missing very much. The change it brought about to, not only my gaming, but also overall PC experience is awesome. The 16:10 ratio looks much better than the 16:9 format of widescreen display (which my Dad's got).It gives you much more desktop space to work in. Browsing in full screen never felt better.
I've always been a collector of cool wallpapers from all over the net, but most of my wallpapers are for the 4:3 resolutions. So now I'm digging for some widescreen walls. And the screens I've got already are pretty amazing indeed. Thanks mostly to the widescreen walls collection at deviantART.
As for the gaming, I don't think I need to say anything. I've been playing Burnout Paradise, Mirror's Edge, and currently X-Men Origins: Wolverine on my new monitor, and all I can call it is pure gaming bliss. A few weeks back I've also got myself a couple of more gigs of RAM, so now the 4GBs of RAM is good enough to back smooth enough gameplay in the higher resolution in the new monitor. Some highly anticipated game titles are gonna hit the shelves within a few weeks, bring 'em on I say!

The Best and Worst of Me

The 3rd year 2nd semester has brought out both the best and worst in me, based on results. As I've mentioned earlier, the telecommunication exam was the worst exam I've ever had to attend, for multiple reasons, and the result was an equal match. I got a poor 43 out of 100, which is the worst score I've ever got as far as I remember. I didn't expect any better, all I wanted was to get rid of it. Thankfully I did.
In striking contrast, I got my best ever score in the Power Transmission and Distribution exam, getting a 90. I don't remember hitting the 90 mark ever, so that's my highest mark as far as I can remember. Despite the poor marks in telecomm and semiconductor, thanks to Allah I've still managed to get a respectable GPA, due to the A+ scores in all the three other subjects. And Alhamdulillah I can finally say, 3-2 is behind me, which leaves just one more year to deal with.

Sylhet 2009 (Day 3): The Other Side of the Fence

Monday morning we started later than we wanted to. We were actually pretty damn tired from the extended amount of walking on the previous day. We checked out of the hotel and kept our baggage at Nahiyan's place, and took a public transport known as tempo here in our country, towards Jaflong. On our way to Jaflong we feasted our eyes with the sight of the huge mountains that are visible across the border, over in India. Well, "the mountains are always higher on the other side of the fence", hehe. The shear magnitude of the mountain range clicked the inquisitive part of my mind, it made me wonder, what secrets lay hidden in those deep valleys covered with trees. There must be places within those mountains and forests that no one has ever set foot upon. Truly Allah's creation is way wider than our thoughts can be.

Jaflong is a place that combines sand, stone, and crystal clear water in a fascinating way. It is a tourist spot, yet the place is busy with labor, men picking up stone from the river bed. Stones of various dazzling shades and patterns form under the river bed, carried down from the mountains with the stream. The other guys again shed most of their clothing and got themselves in the water, while I was busy taking photos, as usual. But the clearness of water was enticing indeed.

We took a bus from there and got to Tamabil. It's just the very last point of Bangladesh in the east, and you can see the last standing milestone of Bangladesh and the two gates of the neighboring countries. We took some photos there and didn't make much delay, as the place is a little sensitive due to security reasons.

Next up we payed a very short visit to the shrine of Hazrat Shah Paran (R), another great preacher of Islam in the subcontinent. Over here the situation was a bit better than that of Hazrat Shah Jalal's (R).

Back in Srimangal I was a little disappointed to find the tea gardens flat. Well that disappointment was washed away when we got to the famed Malinichhara Tea Garden in the afternoon. The whole garden was planted over the hills. We got ourselves a guide from the garden, and soon we were on our way to the top. As we were getting higher from ground level, the view kept getting better and better. The vast hills seemed to be wrapped around by the tea plants. Withing a little more than half an hour, we got to the top, feasted our eyes with the view, took photos, and got down again, this is only possible by true adventurers like us!


That pretty much concluded all we wanted to see in our trip. Still, taking a brief but much needed break at Nahiyan's house, we started to walk and reached the shrine of Manik Pir which is 225 steps above the ground level. On both sides of the steps there are graves. From the top we got a view to the whole city in the night.

For dinner we were invited by Nahiyan's father to his own restaurant, and the food was awesome and well needed for our over-night bus ride to Dhaka. Our bus, a Scania  from Green Line service, started on schedule at half past midnight. By dawn, we were back home.

Even days after returning from the trip, in my dreams, I find myself walking through forests, climbing hills, going to places I haven't seen before. Sylhet, with its mesmerizing natural beauty, has cast a spell on me that cannot be undone, and it may remain so for life. The trip made me wonder what amazing places are there in Allah's world, that I haven't seen yet. It made me feel small, and made me understand Allah's power of creation and supervision even more. This has been a remarkable journey for me, and maybe if I was a better writer, I could express it better. This was my first trip without any family members to watch over me, with my friends alone, so indeed is was a milestone for me. Thanks to Allah for everything.

Click here to view some of the photos I took during the Sylhet trip.

Sylhet 2009 (Day 2): Rock and Water

The spot that played the chief role in bringing us to Sylhet was the Madhabkunda water falls. On our second day, we started real early towards there in our rented microbus, right after Fajr prayer. The road to Madhabkunda was a beauty itself. Curving this way and that, climbing uphill and going down again, we wished all of our roads were like that. At about 8:30 in the morning, we reached the gates of the Madhabkunda Eco Park, from there a walk of about half an hour in necessary to reach the falls. While walking towards the fall, we already started to feel that we're really gonna like this place. We could see the water from the fall running over the rocks below, at one point we got down from the path into the water just to get our feet wet and take some photos. We kept walking and admiring the beauty of the place, and then we saw it. The water fall itself. The stream of water running down from the top of the hill is like the grand jewel in the crown that is the whole surrounding. The sight that was in front of my eyes only made me wonder how much more beautiful can paradise be? The wide encircling rocky hills, decorated with green, the sparkling water falling from high above, the pool of water at the base, the stream and the sound of pure nature, this is heaven on earth. I was taking a lot of photos as I was walking towards the fall, but when I saw it for the first time, I just put the camera in my pocket and looked at the whole place for a long time. Then I started taking snaps, and I couldn't stop.

The pleasure got on to a much higher level as soon as we put ourselves in the water. It was cool, and yet it didn't hurt, it was just relaxing, it seemed to carry away all my thoughts away from me. I felt like there's just me and this place, and nothing else. I can swim, but I'm not confident about it, so all I did was sit in shallow water and take a few dips. As we went real early, for more than an hour we had the place totally to ourselves, just the six of us. I was busy taking photos of nature alone, while others where taking there own pictures for their facebook profiles, hehe. After staying there for about two and a half hours, against our heart, we started to head back. There's a watch tower which gives great view of the whole place, we got on top, and it looked as if I'm looking at a piece of art, come alive out of the canvas. Subhanallah. Guess who's the artist?

Our microbus took us to a bus stand in Maulavibazaar, where we took a bus and reached Sylhet City by the after noon, where our friend from AUST, Nahiyan picked us up. He helped us getting a hotel room in the viscinity of the Dargah of Hazrat Shah Jalal (R), the most visited shrine in the country I guess. We visited the shrine later that night.

After filling our starving stomachs with some food, we headed out to look around the Sylhet city, guided by Nahiyan. We saw the Keen Bridge, and the famous Amjad Uncles's Clock.

Before the Isha prayer we perfomed the Ziarat of the grave sight of Hazrat Shah Jalal (R), who was one of the key preachers of Islam in the subcontinent, and has been the medium of Hidayat of a large number of people. After coming to Sylhet, it was an unavoidable duty to pay a visit to his shrine. I knew the the dargah was full of Bidaats and non-islamic rituals, but I never imagined it to be so bad. The things that people are doing in the name of this noble person, was absolutely unacceptable according to Shariah. I don't wanna get into details here, but the scene inside the dargah cannot be fitted into any particular religion, as if these so called Khadems had invented a whole new religion using the name of this mighty hero of Islam. May Allah give these people Hidayat, and May Allah give peace to the grave of Hazrat Shah Jalal (R).

Me and Pulak stayed up late, walking in the streets and gossiping, while others went to bed early. A very eventful second day of our trip had come to an end.

Click here to view some of the photos I took during the Sylhet trip.

Sylhet 2009 (Day 1): Wake Up and Smell the Tea !

Me, Pulak and Rumman have been calling each other constantly, planning a trip to Sylhet. We all needed a big break, a breath of fresh air after the turmoil that we went through last month. We planned to go to Srimangal directly, instead of going to the city of Sylhet first. We wanted to have some fun on the way, so we booked train tickets. On the night of April 10, Friday, the six of us, me, Pulak, Rumman, Imran, Kanon and Rocky all gathered at the Kamlapur Rail Station in time. As scheduled, our train started for Srimangal at 10:00 p.m.

Our seat arrangement was the best we could ask for, six of us facing each other. The whole night we spent awake, gossiping, laughing and constantly hitting on each other. We had some great laughs while playing chor-pulish, a famous pen-and-paper game in our country. It was a moonlit night, so as the train passed beyond the urban areas, the surroundings got more and more spectacular. I spent a lot of time just looking out from my window into the hills and forests that lay beyond. We reached Srimangal well before dawn, and we went straight to the rest house which we had already booked.

The first morning at Srimangal we gave for Lauachhara National Park, it's a semi-evergreen forest 'supervised' by an organization called Nishorgo Support Project. The 'park' was more like a forest than we expected it to be. After walking about half an hour into the heart of it, the environment became pretty amazing indeed, with dense trees on both sides and typical forest like silence. But our timing wasn't ideal to catch the sight of any wild animals. All we got to see was some monkeys and lizards. Nonetheless the walk inside Lauachhara was pretty enjoyable.

Back from the forest, we had lunch and got ourselves a quick nap. In the afternoon, we got out again to look around some of the tea gardens at Srimangal. I was a little disappointed to see that the tea gardens here are mostly flat. Then in the evening we went to the Nilkantha Tea Cabin to taste the famous multi-layered tea. After waiting for a long time, the tea arrived, and indeed it looked out of the ordinary, with six layers of tea visible separately. It didn't taste as good as it looked, but the change in taste from one layer to another was evident.

At the night, we all walked about the Srimangal town by ourselves. It was pretty amazing to see that even at 10:30 p.m. the town was still alive, with people moving around and shops still open, whereas Dhaka becomes a ghost town after 10.

So came the end of the first day of our Sylhet trip. And from the looks of things, we were expecting a great couple of days ahead of us.

Click here to view some of the photos I took during the Sylhet trip.