What I found was quite astonishing – the majority of the film was taken pre-1953 (my grandparent’s wedding) – perhaps around the time my Dada (MP Srivastava) went to Manchester to study. When he was around 24 at that age (my age right now!). In the video we see my Dada’s sister Manorama Sinha, her dashing Army-man husband Narbadesh Sinha, and a whole bunch of their kids (Anita Bua, Prashant Chacha, Perhaps Rekha Bua and Shivesh Chacha), on a holiday to what looks like Logie Estate in Mussorie (so pre-1951 when it was given on rent).My Dada (MP Srivastava) is holding a baby wearing a sleeveless sweater. We can also see General SK Sinha’s father (according to my Dadi, he resembles SK Sinha aka Mane) and mother (name unknown – but Dadi remembers that she used to tie her sari seedhe pallu). There is someone who resembles Dadi’s father (PC Saxena – Inspector General of Police) – which means that that section of the film was post 1953.

Later we see Dada (MP Srivastava) posing with a lady – unknown – in front of some grassy type area. Near the river we see Dada (MP Srivastava), Ramesh Dada (RP Srivastava) and Vimla Dadi (married to Ramesh Dada) joke around in front of large river or sea. Some of the film could have been shot in Kanpur – some of it perhaps in Bombay or Cal – when Dada went/returned from UK by ship.

1. The way i did it – take a lightbox and take photographs of sections of the reel. then manually cut copy paste each frame and save as a separate image. then import the image sequence into a video editing software. painful.

2. the way smart people do it – simply use a projector to project the film and use a dv camera to record it! if u can find a projector that is…

I later read somewhere online that if your reel smells like vinegar (and both my reels do!) – it’s probably in terrible condition and won’t be playable on a projector anyways. So one reel to go…….! phew…

1. We’ll show you a frame from the music video (we being they)
2. You copy the pose with your webcam
3. We add your image to the music video (we being they again)

Go forrr it! :D

Featuring all those wonderful people around the wide web wob who took a minute to help us out:

And can this music be used to understand words/language differently? A different version of spoken/auditory english maybe?

I began by typing! a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a . A whole bunch of a’s. Recorded the sound on Soundbooth. Then I raised the pitch 3 octaves up (36 half-tones). So that the sound would be clearer.
However, there was a lot of ambient noise which also became audible (and sounded very creepy). Hear Audio.

Nontheless, I mapped out the pitches of the sound using a very cool voice-training program called Passaggio. Passaggio outputs a real time pitch map. The pitch of each sound appears a small green or red dot on the note it hits.

Because of all the ambient noise, my pitch map wasn’t very accurate. However, there was  a clear pattern. Clusters of dots appeared along certain notes. Using lines, I tried to map out the exact notes which appeared more frequently.

The outcome was ironical. I pressed the a-key some 19 times. Out of this, the note ‘A’ was the most common pitch. Actually it was halfway between G# and A. Some strange semi-tone. This note appeared in all 3 octaves mapped (in different intensities). A bass D note also appeared in less intensity.

Next step is to record and plot ‘Hello World’ and see what sounds appear.

Ever got a missed call and wondered and wondered who it could possibly be from? Well, know you can know! Well, not exactly. Through the free missed call lookup service you can now see the location and the operator of any mobile phone in India.
I came up with the idea when a ‘shady’ friend of mine sent me border-line ‘shady’ messages when she got a new number.  The data available is not 100% up-to-date and is mostly restricted to GSM phones. Will try to update as and when.

Post script: Since this was such a technical project involving php and mysql (finally understand it a bit!), the need to make it ‘arty’ is more than needed. Ideas include tracking its growth using Google Analytics and some devious viral marketing schemes. Facebook for one. Sending out SMS’s (SM-messes :) to whole bunch of ppl with this link seeing if they respond. Saying ‘I’m your garbage. Trace me’. Haha.  Hmm.. viral marketing warplan needed! Full on combat! End result a pictoral representation of Analytics data? To show how humans function like viruses. Matrix style.  Okay whatever.