Rigved

In a casual conversation about how man considers everything in nature as a resource for his own benefit, Rig came up with the thought, The human being is a trash can since all resources are getting ‘dumped into’ him under the pretext of utilization.

Rig has a notebook with Einstein’s picture on it with quotes by Einstein printed on the bottom of each page. The page that he was using today had the quote: Intellectual’s solve problems, Geniuses stop problems from taking place. Rig came and announced this quote to me and after a bit of thought said, “This is a little demeaning to programmers who are debugging right now!”

(For people who do not know what is debugging: Debugging is the task that a programmer has to do every now and then to rectify errors(bugs) in the code he or she wrote)

Like many people I like to archive photographs of family outings, logs of events that took place and basically hold on to some memories. I recently read, “Dont let your memories be bigger than your dreams!” I was a little taken aback by that and shared that with Rig. He responded happily that the person who quoted that probably did not have too many nice things to remember and that’s why he needs to look to his dreams, to his future to feel good. Also dreams have not yet ‘happened’ but the memories ‘have happened’ so they are more real. Its okay to have more memories than dreams!

Rigved is growing up real fast. He is constantly doing something, mostly making something or reading. Lately he is been reading Conn Igulden and creating more paper guns and making war films. Here is his first ever film (He filmed it, edited and added music to it.. but he is not in it):

He calls himself ThePaperTerror on YouTube and thats pun intended coz he tears paper to make weapons of terror! He had a nice response to his video on Facebook and 3 people subscribed to it. He was pleased by this of course and said, I need to make more and better films coz these are subscribers and they ll expect better films. Another thing that he mentioned which kinda made me feel he is thinking straight is when I told him about multiple camera setups. I was suggesting maybe he could try it with his iPhone camera, some other camera that his friend has etc. He replied saying that the pixel quality wont be the same!

Rigved has written down his main goal for the next few weeks. It is to make a website that talks about techniques and tips for playing the online role playing game, Battlefield Heroes. Yesterday he was trying out his hand at HTML and today he actioned out this goal into smaller actions and wrote them on a white board in his room. He got this idea from a video of Brian Tracy. Later he watched a bit of a long Napolean Hill video and observed very innocently that Napolean Hill looks like a little mole, a highly inspired mole with goals.

Rigved and me went out to buy some supplies for his new project, a short live action war film that he is making with his friends. On our way back, we went to Cafe Coffee Day to reminisce the older days when we got talking bout various things including art. I was telling him that I can get quite bored if I m holed up in the house for long but he did not when he was with me in San Diego. He could sit for days working on some terrain or working out a song on the keyboard with little or no boredom whatsoever. He did not have friends either! He thought for a bit and said, Art is a companion.

Rig just completed all 6 sides of the Rubik’s cube. He had been at it for the last 2 days for multiple hours looking at videos and algorithms to solve the cube. Especially last night when he was up till 3 am doing just this. He had done this in the past and was able to solve the cube without any ‘Internet’ help but he had lost touch when we went and lived in San Diego for some time. It looks like he wants to master it all over again

Another thing that he is diligently doing is working out  the track ‘Bloodsail Tavern‘ from our most favourite game so far, World of Warcraft and ‘One Day‘ from Pirates of the Carribean  soundtrack so that he can make a video out of it.

At this moment Rigved is learning how to create HTML pages and taking a keen interest in it. His objective is to create a website that has video and pdf tutorials about Warhammer toys. He has also started making short videos using iMovie. Currently he likes making spoofs of famous movies and posting on YouTube.

Rigved and me have recently come to San Diego. He absolutely loves it here. When we landed, he said an interesting thing bout how he felt. He said, it feels like I ve jumped into a giant swimming pool. He loves swimming pools.

As I type this, he is learning how to play the track ‘Up is down’ from Pirates of the Caribbean by Hans Zimmer. We just watched a live performance by Hans and his orchestra performing a medley of the tracks from the movie. Rig just loves these tracks. He likes this more than he likes the tracks from The Social Network(Trent Reznor) and Van Halen. He loves music with a western classical touch and heroic feel more than anything else. Right now he has fired up Synthesia on the Mac and he has reduced the tempo of Up is Down and he is learning to play it

Rig announced that he has just finished reading Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. He also added that this is the best book he has ever read. This is probably the first book that he has read which is not even remotely targeted towards children or teenagers. All the books he has read till now, and they are easily more than 700 of em, were in some way or the other targeted toward children/teenagers and were mostly fantasy driven. Lord of the Rings is not targeted toward children, but it has ample material to entertain children.  He has read all three LOTR books, all the Harry Potter books (at least 20 times each), Narnia, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Saga series(which is targeted toward teenagers) etc. He did read the Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy as well but then again that could be targeted toward teenagers.