Finally, I managed a family photo-shoot, more than two months after Advaita’s arrival. I have been playing with an external flash I bought recently (will write a separate post about it soon). And I must say bouncing flash makes a huge difference to the photos (I am no big fan of direct flash and the unnatural way in which it lights subjects - but bouncing flash is altogether different).
Like many good things in life, THE news came as a wonderful surprise. I am sure I was not alone - too stunned to believe. The first event for the Indian team that I saw was boxer Dinesh Kumar going down to an Algerian and though I was happy about a 19 year old Indian making to the Olympics, I was worried about the medal prospects. But today’s news was just amazing. Hearty congratulations to Abhinav Bindra and thanks to him for giving us this moment to enjoy. He is one of the two Indian bloggers (other being Rajyavardhan Rathore) from Olympics participants and you can leave him a congratulatory message on his blog.
But spare a thought for another Indian shooter Gagan Narang, who was 9th in the qualifiers in the same event with just a point behind Abhinav, who was 4th. So ranks 5th to 9th, all were just a point behind the 4th. The results are available here. That just shows how tough the competition is out there and you can understand why Abhinav said that it is important to support the athletes even when they lose. Hopefully, Gagan can still come up with some great results as he has two more events to participate in.
For now, I am so pleased that a barrier has been broken.
Runs absolutely fine… even with 512 MB RAM. So my 4 year old desktop is still doing great and has the latest and best OS and now feels just like new.
Advaita has not even completed 2 months yet and he has already attended 2 parties and has been to the beach once.
Advaita, tired after his visit to the beach on Sunday -
Though I have had the Canon Powershot G9 for more than a couple of months, I had not tried the manual controls and the RAW shooting mode. But I started experinmenting yesterday and since iPhoto 6 doesn’t support G9 RAW, I tried the Canon Raw Image Task. I was impressed with the post-processing that can be done with RAW images but cannot say the same about the Canon utility.
There is at least one freeware out there for Mac OS X - RAW Photo Processor. GIMP + UFRaw is also available, but I am not sure how elegant it is on Mac (or whether it works) - couldn’t find much information. But these do not provide photo organisation / library features and the workflow (download from camera, process, organise, print/export/publish) tends to become complicated.
There are a few options available to incorporate RAW/Post processing and workflow - Apple Aperture, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop Elements + Bridge. Apple’s Aperture 2.0 is available for a 30 day free trial and I am giving it a try. Also, Connected Flow has a free plugin for Aperture to export photos to Flickr and so the workflow for photos from camera to flickr via post processing is painless through one application itself.
One of my first tries -
There is loads of information on RAW vs JPEGs available and I cannot add much value here at this point of time, but I am sure that I will never go back to in-camera JPEGs now.
Just when you think what more can be done - you come across a new concept and then you think why it took so long to be discovered. HDRI is a technique to combine highlights and/or shadows from a set of photographs taken at different exposure settings. The results can be stunning and I want to try it out soon.
There is a good introduction to HDR at the dPS (digital Photography School) site. And if you want to have a look at some amazing HDR images visit http://stuckincustoms.com/.
Finally I managed to make some time from the totally busy days and got Advaita’s first video uploaded. It is just over 3 minutes and you have to watch the clip to see how nappy changing, bathing, and dressing up is possible in 3 minutes.
Advaita(अद्वैत): Nappy, Bathe, and Dress from Sandeep Meher on Vimeo.
It has been a roller coaster ride for the last few weeks. I cannot describe the anxiety when the predicted due date of Advaita’s arrival, came and passed without any signs whatsoever. But exactly after a week, he came and has brought with him unlimited joy and happiness for me and Mili.
Though both of us were all ready for months before the birth and even after going through the labour for number of hours on the day of birth, we were stunned on actually seeing Advaita for the first time immediately after he was delivered. And that moment will remain etched in our minds forever.
And when the anxiety of birth is over, it is now anxiety about whether you are doing the right thing - are you holding him correctly?, is this normal?, is that normal?, do all babies have this issue?, do all parents have this issue?, is it alright if he does that?, and so on and on. And I think this will go on now for years to come.
Welcome to parenthood!!!
Announce to the world
Aai went through a lot
Baba is very happy
Pensive
And now, rest
Meanwhile, read more about his name at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta.
Here is my first online HD video shot on Canon HV20 and edited using iMovie.
Anusha from Sandeep Meher on Vimeo.
1. Canon HV20: I had already decided for a HD camcorder as I didn’t want to be stuck with a SD (Standard Definition) camcorder while HD (High Definition) takes over the delivery mechanism (TV - HD and players - Blu-ray).
After much deliberation on the recording format (Tape or HDD - Hard Disk Drive), I decided on Tape as it still offers better quality than the compression formats on HDD, especially if you go for HD. This is because HD requires substantial storage space and hence rigourous compression if it has to be stored on HDD or Flash Drives (some camcorders have started offering that). This leads to convoluted workflow while editing and publishing. Also, contrary to my assumption, tape is considered to be a good archival medium.
And my research says that Canon HV20 is currently the best consumer camcorder to record HD on Mini DV tape, especially with its fantastic CINE setting.
Soon, I will post the results on Vimeo. Not Youtube. Vimeo lets you upload better resolution videos including HD.
2. Canon Powershot G9: This was a result of another painful and long decision making process. By paying 10% extra than what one pays for the G9, it is easy to acquire a DSLR (Digital SLR), but I decided against DSLR as I am still not dedicated enough to photography to warrant a DSLR.
On the other hand, I wanted complete manual control to be available for those genius moments and G9 fits the bill (my other camera Fujifilm Finepix E550 offered manual control but it has started showing its age). G9 is a compact with a retro rangefinder look rather than the sleek compacts/point and shoots that have flooded the market.
But the learning curve is not for the faint-hearted and currently I am a bit worried when I will be able to master it.
3. Wacom Bamboo One: Finally, a cheap pen tablet compatible with Mac and from a company dominating the product space and rightly so. What a difference a pen tablet makes in Photo editing!? It is unbelievable - a 3-5 minute lasso selection task using mouse or trackpad in an image editing software can be done in 10 secods flat.
This is one hilarious site about funny signboards in Marathi (found in Pune) - PuneriPatya.com. But there is one notice which is in English - check it - you won’t regret.
For those who do not understand Marathi, try this - sillysigns.blogspot.com.
Here is a digitally altered image of a photo that I had captured long time back. I was working on how to make it striking and the ‘posterise’ effect seems to do the job.
For a list of interesting blogs around the world, check out the 2008 Weblog Awards.
I am not sure why but I thought that most people would like to be a writer or a photographer. And curious enough, a quick google search landed me to a blog at Guardian. So yes, one guess was correct.
I do wonder how a writer or photographer will answer that!
My guess is that most of us want to be creative, and I am puzzled at why it could be so difficult to be creative in the job one already has.
I am not in touch with IT/Software students in school/colleges currently. But Yahoo! Developer Network, Google Code (especially Google Summer of Code, which brings together students and mentors from the industry every year and pays substantial stipend for each project selected for development), Mozilla Labs, IBM developerWorks Open Source, Sun Developer Network provide an ample learning opportunity for aspiring students. And of course, so does getting involved in one of the many Open Source projects hosted at SourceForge.net. But the frameworks, APIs, tools, and hosting platforms provided by the above companies can help students to get started quickly and make decisions between choosing ideas faster.
I was able to create and publish a Yahoo! pipe called foup that takes an email id registered with Flickr and returns the photosets created and the details of each photo in the photoset. The XML formatted pipe output can then be used to form the URL of each image and display the photos on your site [I will update the post soon with a simple html/script that does that].
Users need to be aware of the Flickr Community Guidelines before using Flickr images on their site.
There are a lot of ideas for the project - depends on how much time can be devoted.
Next post will be about Yahoo! Developer Network, Google Labs, Mozilla Labs and how IT/Software students can benefit from them.
Firstly, Yahoo! do not brand it as Yahoo! pipes - just plain pipes.
I have been dabbling with Yahoo! pipes for a couple of days. It has been quite some time since I did any coding, so I can’t add much value right now other than directing you to this informative presentation (5.4MB).
But I have an idea - a WordPress plugin that picks keywords from the blog post and outputs news results, blog search results, Wikipedia entries, or something similar. Any takers?
I received the Mahabharata, a complete 3 volume hardbound set of Amar Chitra Katha comics and am very impressed with the details of the epic that these comics go through.
The story is told as it’s first recital in public - by Vyasa’s disciple Vaishampayana in the presence of King Janamejaya, the great-grandson of Vyasa’s grandson.
The set is made up of 41 comics totaling more than 1300 pages. For anybody who wishes to dwell in the great literature that is Mahabharata, these comics should certainly be considered as a first step.
Here are some pictures to check how the set looks.
Ars Technica has reported that Nokia is to buy Trolltech.
I would like to speculate that this definitely has something to do with the success of iPhone. And that Nokia wants to build a strong platform on the desktop for it’s phones. Till iPhone came into the market, the desktop interface to mobile phones was limited to the (not so friendly) syncing of the address books and a few other features.
What surprises me is the selection of the development platform - Qt from Trolltech, KDE and GTK/Gnome are predominantly Linux technologies. So does that mean Nokia is betting on Linux’s success on the Desktop.
Finally, I gave in to the temptation of the MacHeist Software Bundle and bought it. It is a collection of 14 Mac applications that, if bought separately, would cost $498.60. But MacHeist is running a deal for two weeks when they sell the bundle for $49.
Of course, I think most of the buyers would be thinking same as me - that even if a few applications are useful, it will be money well spent. I made the decision simply because of iStopMotion from Boinx Software which sounds a very fun application. And Pixelmator, 1password and Cha-Ching could be useful.
That is the same question I was pondering on about two years ago. In that post, I had mentioned “..another 100% gain and it will take the sensex to 22000.” Now, I had kept myself invested in stocks since then, but still I did not make a killing.
But with the global share markets tumbling down on Monday, if my other statement turns out to be true - “you cannot rule out sensex touching 6000-8000 again.” - I would so much love to invest more money in the market. Until then, what else can we do but to wait and watch, and read amusing articles and comments on various financial sites.
BTW, the above question can be asked at any point in time. But there is no time for anybody to give a confident answer.
You know how when you get too close to the edge of a rooftop, you can feel your mortality?
Or when you’re driving and you wonder, just for a split second, what would happen if the oncoming lights swerved into your lane?
If you are interested in comics, I would suggest you go and read the webcomic, Outside The Box by Brendan Cahill. The story, artwork and dialogues are thoroughly enjoyable.
5 seconds after I published my previous post, I checked the MaTa site and the issue is not even on the front page anymore. So, does that mean that MaTa has already given up on getting an apology from Guardian? For Marathi readers, the MaTa articles can still be found by clicking here.
Maharashtra Times (MaTa) has been trying to stir up emotions for Indians, Maharashtrians, Mumbaikars to protest against the British newspaper Guardian, for publishing the hilarious or offensive (depends on how you look at it) piece in its travel supplement regarding Ganesh festival in Mumbai.
Both the newspapers have gone beyond their journalistic responsibilities. Guardian has published a paragraph that cannot be backed up with any sort of data whatsoever and has refused to acknowledge that that is the case. And MaTa is providing unnecessary publicity to the article, which (according to me) is nothing but a filler in one of Guardian’s weekly supplements and would have been read by a few people and remembered by fewer than that (but I agree there might have been a deluge of Mardi Gras enthusiasts flocking to Mumbai in September and later getting together with Maharastra Times in bashing up Guardian for misleading them… hah).
A quick search for other contributions from the writer of this controversial paragraph, Chris Madigan, as a journalist brings up nothing but some travel articles on winter holiday activities. I am not even sure if that guy has ever visited Mumbai (I would expect a travel journalist to actually visit the place he writes about, but maybe Guardian or any newspaper these days are pretty relaxed about that - and I would also expect the journalist to actually interact with the locals and understand what he needs to write). But I as I wrote earlier, I think it was just a filler and neither the reader nor the editors care much about the contents in the filler. I stopped reading the British Sunday newspapers, when I noticed that some articles are recycled so very often (and they even cycle it through various supplements).
If MaTa is so genuinely concerned about the issue, I cannot understand why it has not got it’s sister (or rather big brother) publication ‘Times of India’ involved in this. After all, they (the Times Group) do claim that TOI is the world’s largest selling English broadsheet newspaper - it could be an effective weapon (possibly they have not been able to influence TOI but they do want an apology from Guardian - who sadly do not even understand cultures outside their country - or maybe the western world. Sadly the same can be said about MaTa not able to understand the cultures outside Maharastra - for that matter, some could even say the MaTa does not understand the cultures outside Mumbai). Apart from MaTa, nobody has carried this news and cause (that is really strange in today’s world of Star News and Aaj tak). So if they are really serious about this, MaTa needs to rethink about what would have been and should be the best way to address the issue.
There has lot to be said about the quality of media (especially the news media) and it is not very positive. But more of that later.
Ratan Tata has said the above in an interview and I am totally in awe of this great man. Won’t every person in India and elsewhere in the world benefit immensely if this simple advice is put in practice by everybody?
The unveiling of the Tata Nano could be a defining moment in history in many terms (and not limited to the automobile industry) - product design capabilities, R&D investment, transportation, environment, alternative fuel, social well-being and much more.
Being in UK, the possibility of a price point of owning a brand-new car at £1250 just seems unbelievable to me. And contrary to many who may think that Tata Nano has no place in the western countries, I think there is already an existing market which is catered by the likes of smart car and Tata Motors could be targeting this market.
While discussing Flickr and tagging with friends, realisation dawned on me that tagging could be used effectively in organising the numerous documents that are produced regularly in our day-to-day work in IT (adoption in an enterprise for other users will require much deeper thoughts - but I think for existing users of a Content or Document Management System, this could be the next enhancement).
The basic idea is to have del.icio.us for the desktop (or rather network or rather intranet). But the bookmarks not limited to web pages, instead the emphasis should be on documents (or files on the network). Of course, the success and effectiveness will be very much dependent on the contribution of each and every creator and reader of the document (hence the term Social bookmarking, isn’t it?). The del.icio.us network paradigm when applied to such a product can also be useful for collaboration.
My first impressions on using Sharepoint were very positive (it seems to be a real enterprise solution as compared to the online tools I had mentioned in my earlier post) and has loads of features.
But I had just started using it and I discovered an issue (I am not calling it a bug) with the simple upload feature in the Shared Folders - it does not allow the ‘&’ character in the file names. Well, I have never used an ‘&’ in a file name and I have no special affinity towards it (but my project has tons of files created that include ‘&’). I fail to understand - if Microsoft Windows XP allows a file to be created with a character, why does another Microsoft product not support it.
And when you select multiple documents for upload with file names including unsupported characters, it throws an ‘Access Denied’ error - now that, I think, is definitely a bug.
I am wondering how Microsoft’s Testing team looks like.
- Quicksilver: Application Launcher and much more
- Adium: Instant messaging with support for Yahoo!, MSN, GTalk, and even Lotus Sametime (simultaneous login)
- TextWrangler: Programmer’s Text Editor
- Cyberduck: FTP Client
- HandBrake: DVD to MPEG-4 Converter
- Quinn: Tetris-like/Brick Game
- VLC: Media player and much more that supports all sorts of audio/video formats
- MacTheRipper: DVD Ripper
- Thunderbird: E-mail client
- Fickr Uploadr: Photo uploader for Flickr
- NeoOffice: Office Suite
- Gimp: Photo editing/manipulation
All the above are freeware and many are open-source. But the power, finish, and quality of these applications are absent even in many commercial applications.
Being an avid movie collector, I would like to include one application that is not a freeware but is definitely essential -
- Delicious Library: DVDs and Books Catalogue
