Prat Buzz by Prateek Mahesh

Of late I have been developing a lot of interest in Music. After a few jamming sessions in my Apartment Complex, I began to appreciate and enjoy a variety of genres in Music. Some of the artists I follow are the BERKLEE INDIAN ENSEMBLE(fusion music), Snarky Puppy(jazz), Ed Sheeran, Sia and The Chainsmokers. I am learning to play the Tabla & Keyboard and I also play a couple of other Percussion Instruments too. I also enjoy DJ ing on VirtualDJ. I have also been making a lot of Indian versions of English Songs like Something Just like This, Treat You Better and Shape of you on GarageBand. I have also joined my 8th Grade's School Band(which is called "Indie Panic"). In our band, We made an Indian Version of the song Let Me Love You by Justin Bieber. I have attached the file below. My dream is to go and study music in the Berklee College of Music in Boston and become a full time Musician and Sound Engineer.

This weekend (15th January), I attended Ustadji Zakir Hussain's concert in Chowdiah Memorial Hall. This Concert was part of the Aadi Anant Festival of Indian Music. Zakir Hussain played Tabla, Anantha R.Krishnan played the Mridangam, Navin Sharma on the Dholak and Sabir Khan on the Sarangi. The musicians followed the 16 count cycle(The Teen Taal). This was my first classical music concert and I thoroughly enjoyed the entire performance. The best part about the Concert was that, I got to meet my Idol, Ustadji Zakir Hussain. I am learning to play the Tabla and I had a very good opportunity to meet him Backstage. Once the show got over, the musicians bowed and they went backstage. That's when, I plucked up the courage to go there. The moment I saw him, I showed respect by touching his feet. After that, Ustadji went inside a room to take some rest. In about 5 minutes, the manager came out of the room and said that Ustadji was late for his flight to the US, so he would on...

Off late, there have been many movies(in the bollywood film industry) which have been showcasing Sportspersons like Sultan, Mary Kom, MS Dhoni, Chak de etc. Dangal is also such a movie which shows the life of Mahavir Singh Phogat and his daughters-Geeta Phogat & Babita Phogat who were great wrestlers in the history of Indian Wrestling. The Story- Aamir Khan plays the lead role  of Mahavir Singh Phogat, Fatima Shaikh as Geeta Kumari Phogat and Sanya Malhotra as Geeta Kumari Phogat. The movie shows how the Two sisters learnt wrestling from their father who was a National Level Champion in Indian wrestling. As he was unable to win a Gold medal for his country, he wants his wish to be fulfilled by his children.  Mahavir Singh (Aamir Khan) is disappointed at not having a son, so he decides to train his daughters to become wrestlers. Wrestling was always considered a male sport and it is this mindset that these girls challenge and overcome in this movie. These ...

Its been a long time since I wrote something new in my Blog, so I decided to write about the hidden Dinosaur game in Google Chrome. I got to know about this a few months back in School. One of the days when I had the Computer period, I opened Google Chrome and I wanted to search for something in Google.  But I was unaware of the fact that the internet was switched off. So I got a notification like this with a dino on the top. I got frustrated so I hit the spacebar with my fingers, And all of a sudden, I saw the dino move. I got exited and I figured out that it was a game that appears when the Internet is switched off. For the first few minutes I didn't know how to control the dinosaur. But, yea I eventually figured it out. The up arrow key or the space bar is used to make the dino jump and the down arrow key is used to make the dino bend down or duck down. This is a quiet nice game it can keep the user engaged when the internet is down. This game has gained popul...

Prisma is one of the most trending apps of this year. It is an app that allows you to modify and add  artistic effects to your photos. There are around 20 different designs which are available in Prisma. The app is available on Google Play as well as the App Store. It was launched in June this year and has gained in popularity very fast.     Prisma has a really cool interface and it is very easy to use. It basically converts your image into a completely modified image with a lot of Artistic effects and Patterns. It uses AI(Artificial Intelligence) which helps you to convert the image into beautiful works of Art. This app allows you to easily share the image on various Social Networking Platforms like FaceBook, Instagram, WhatsApp etc.  The App: Using Prisma is very simple. All you got to do is to select an image or click one and then choose the effect you want to apply. Below I have an example: Here I have selected an image from my gallery. Yo...

Badminton is a sport played between two people or teams using racquets to hit a ShuttleCock across a net. This Sport is usually played outdoors while official matches are played in Indoor courts. Badminton can be played both Singles and Doubles (including doubles-mixed). The sport is very similar to Tennis. The main differences are that tennis is played with a ball whereas badminton is played with a shuttle cock and the other one is that badminton courts are smaller compared to tennis courts. The History: The game was invented nearly in the 1800s. It was a contemporary form of badminton called 'poona'.  British Officers took this game to England where they named it Badminton. After this there was a Badminton Federation formed. Later it was introduced in the Commonwealth Games and the   Olympics. Then on, the game started getting popular and now it is an International Sport.  The Court: The dimensions of a badminton court is 20ft by 44ft. The court is divid...

The MacBook Pro 15 inch with the stunning retina display, Intel Iris Pro Graphics Card and the force touch mouse pad is one of the best Mac notebooks. This Mac is highly recommended for computer programmers, graphic designers, photo and video editing and musicians. The MacBook Pro  has a really solid metal look. The keyboard backlit with LED Lights looks really amazing and the best part about it is that each and every key is backlit with a single LED. The mouse pad looks neat and is very comfortable to use. The OSx version on this device is 10 (El Capitan). The ports available on this device are- Two USB 3.0 Slots Two thunderbolt Slots The Headphone Jack HDMI  SDXC Card Slot MagSafe 2(charger)                                                               The specs of this device are: ...

I am part of an eco-club in my apartment complex. Here we learn about various facts like composting, segregation of waste and we also do some social service activities like collecting old newspaper from residents, cleaning the apartment plaza area and etc. Today we cleaned and collected all the plastic and dry waste present in the jogging track. As there were many young kids and some older ones, the volunteers split us into two groups. The small children made paper bags whereas the older ones cleaned and collected plastic and dry waste in the jogging track. All of us wore protective gloves while collecting the garbage. We collected different things like chips packets, plastic bottles, few glass bottles and some broken ceramic tiles. Everything we collected was put in a bucket. We also found a few paint buckets, chocolate wrappers, cigarettes and much more. This is an areal view of the eco-club members. This collection drive took us an hour to finish and then at the e...

This Summer is getting too hot and the demand for air coolers and air conditioners is increasing. A week back my Uncle came up with an idea of making a home made air cooler. My cousins and I decided to team up to make this air cooler with our uncles guidance. To tell you the truth my uncle was doing all the hard work and my cousins and I were sitting and watching him. Hehehe!! This project is quite simple. All you would need is a paint bucket or a plastic pot, an exhaust fan, a drilling machine and some ice cubes. So lets start. Step 1: You would have to take your paint bucket and drill small holes on its sides. If you don't have a drilling machine, you can also use a sharp nail. Stem 2: Now that we are done with the sides, lets move on to the lid.   The pictures below will give you an idea about what we will be doing in this step. So what we did here was that we placed our fan on the lid of the bucket and outlined its edges with a pe...

An Arduino basically is a Micro controller board, Which means it can be used for making electronic projects like robots, quadrocopters etc.  It is completely open-source. So it doesn't mean that you must need an Arduino licensed board. You can make a variety of circuits using Arduino. You can also program the Arduino to do certain things. I have the Arduino starter kit. It is available online on both Amazon and Flipkart. The basic starter kit consists of the main Arduino board, a bread board, jumper wires, LEDs, resistors and push buttons. Functions of these Parts: Bread Board:  It is a building board for prototyping electronic projects. Jumper Wires:  It can be used for connecting various components in the breadboard.  LED: It is also called L ight E mitting D iode. It is a self explanatory component. Resistors: It is used to control the flow of current. Push Buttons: It is a type of switch or button which when pressed turns on or off an electrica...

Minecraft is a Survival video-game developed by Markus Perrson, a Sweedish Programmer and later by a Company, Mojang. This is more of a building game where players get to build structures with cubical textured blocks. This game can be played on PCs, XBOXs, Playstations and Nintendo Wii U. The Minecraft app can also be purchased from Android Google Play and the Apple App Store. I play Minecraft in my XBOX 360. There is also a special Windows 10 edition which is available on the Microsoft app store. There are 3 different single player game-modes in Minecraft. They are: Creative Survival Superflat Creative: It is a free play mode which allows players to build and destroy structures, buildings etc. You can use any block, any decoration and tool in this mode, the choice is yours. There are various inbuilt structures which can be destroyed. Survival: It is mode in minecraft where players have to collect resources, attack mobs, attack animals to collect resources like wo...

Like the plastic ban which took place a month back, this month there was a road cleaning drive in our main road. Many residents along with their family and children took part in this drive. The apartment housekeeping staff also took part enthusiastically. We used equipment like wheel barrows, shovels and spades. As there was a lot of dry mud along the road that had accumulated over the past several months, it took a lot effort to take it off the ground. All of us were working in groups - one would collect all the mud, the others would  take it and put in the wheel barrow and a few would push the wheel barrow to the vacant land next to the apartment complex(all this mud would be taken away later). While some of the residents were doing the cleaning and transporting of debris, the others supported them by supplying water and refreshments. My group consisted of three members ( my brother, a friend of mine and me). I did the spade work, my brother and friend collected an...

All the societies and communities in my neighbourhood have formed the Waste Management Team. This team focuses on cleaning the neighbourhood, and work in partnership with the elected representatives of the area to build parks etc. One such event organised by the Team was the Plastic Ban Initiative. How was it done: All the communities in the neighbourhood got together and organised a Walkathon. This was not an ordinary walkathon where there are winners. This was a walkathon to create awareness of how harmful single use plastic bags can be. Many people carried posters which had slogans like - "Ban THE Bag", "Leave Plastic Live Fantastic", "Beda!! Beda! Plastic Beda!" etc. The walkathon started from the neighbourhood Bus Stand to a college which was about 2 Kms away. All societies gave all the families taking part in the Walkathon a cloth bag. The Start of the Walkathon: When many people had assembled, the area corporator came to the Bus...

I have been blogging for the past 2-3 years. I have used blogger for www.pratbuzz.blogspot.com and bicyclingisfun.blogspot.com. I have also used the webs.com blog service for TJS kids(3yrs back). I have mainly used blogger. Brief description on Blogger: It is free blog publishing site developed by Pyra Labs and later bought by Google. To use this blogging service one must register with a Google account(ie. gmail account). It is free blog service provider. All the free blogs are given URL which is suffixed with the blogspot.com domain                 (eg: www.exampleblog.blogspot.com), You can also have custom domain(like www.blog.com) but the company charges for it. Every thing else other than AdSense is free. The Interface: Blogger has really good interface. When you open the Blogger window, you get a screen which looks like this: This page is something like a home page. If you click on the New Blog button, you will be able...

Every New Year we make it a practise to visit one new temple. This year we went to Bhoganandishwara Temple. This time my cousins came along with us. About the temple: This temple is located in the Nandi village at the foot of the Nandi hills at the Chikkabalapurr District in Karnataka. The construction started at the early 9th century to the 16th century. It is a pretty old temple around 800 to 1000 years old and is based on the Chola architecture. It is a Shiva and Nandi temple. Getting there: This temple is around 60 kms away from Bangalore. You can easily get there within 1 and a half hours if you drive (4 wheelers or 2 wheelers). We went by a car. Inside the Temple: The temple is a quite a big complex. It has various buildings like the Vasantha Mantapa(wedding hall), Maha mantapa(main hall) and Kalyani(water tank). Here are a few pics I clicked during my visit:                             ...