
Click Info : October 24, 2004 Akazawa,Nagano-ken,Japan.
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"Roti, Kapada aur Makaan" might have been the essentials for the human race with the usual eccentrics publishing their own versions.
Everything looked normal till 800hrs(yesterday), all set to logon to news.google.com when I realized that I am off the network!! Courtesy : my ISP provider has unplugged me. Subscribed to Yahoo Broadband and was kinda "lived happily everaafter",but all of a sudden things started falling apart : "late kate" got into me and missed the bills so waited for the next months cumulative bill, to my luck I didn't get one. As Murphy said when u need your bill the most it ends up in unattended neighbor's post box, finally when u manage to figure it out, the pay date would have expired but the story didn't end there when the ISP guy calls I fumble on the phone with the invincible Japanese lingo.
Whom to blame ? :
a) my Japanese proficiency b) English proficiency of my ISP
c) my late Kate attitude d) my fate.
well what ever be I am the victim, OK to find some solace let me click on "D".
Finally I cross the line into the eccentrics and scream out , I need "Roti, Kapada, Makaan aur cyberspace".
Here onwards I'll be posting the JAPLISH I come across. (JAPLISH : Japanese English).
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JAPLISH of the Day :
A. On my way to office there is a second-hand/used car shop. The ad reads : "New Used Cars".
B. Can you guess whats the antonym of "OK" ? well its "NG" hold on .........still wondering, then here I go "Not Good".
Organizing every day growing digital photographs was a grueling task for me for years. I been trying various kinds of archiving and viewing softwares but nothing ever came close to what I wanted as Picasa did.
Picasa is a freeware. Its interface and feature sets are simply the best what one wants in the process of archiving and viewing.Needless to say that quality and innovative software is powered by Google.
Here is the feature list of picasa :
Picasa's Album sorting just goes in a jiffy. It gives a feel of light and swift. Well for archiving 3000+snaps it made an internal db of some 11MB which is resonable.In every folder it creates Picasa.ini file. One can set options per folder basis: scan the folder or not, or to watch for changes.
Picasa's Slideshow gives you a 3D feel during navigation. It sorts itself on the basis of time stamp. It has an option of background music during slideshow(mp3 support).Navigation is really very intutive. Advanced options help u edit the timeline.
Picasa's Image editor does resizing, cropping, redeye reduction,rotate,color and contrast enhancer.
Picasa also gives options like creating a web-albums(html) or batchprocessing at the click of a button. Guess nothing can be more intutive than this for sure.
Well this is not a complete or partial review of picasa. Try this out its worth a look and sooner or later it becomes indispensable.
TIP : When you want to organize ur digital photographs the best way to name your folders is YYYYMMDD_CAPTION. I prefer this over other ways of categorizing as vacations, family etc as this is based on timestamp.
There are no universal rules without exceptions.
I was lazying around with the idoit box and came across an interesting documentary, its wrt the whalehunting by the chukchi. Chukchi is eastern part of siberia where the winter temperatures go down to -30 degrees Celsius.
Chukchis staple food had been whales for the past 2100yrs. As everyone is aware that whales went into the endangered species list and thereby hunting of whales is banned. Well I cant imagine what could happen to me if they said eating rice(my staple food) is banned. So when the chukchis faced this inevitable world wide ban there was a literally no option but to starve to death.
So the International WHAT SO EVER committee came up with an amendment : Only Chukchis can hunt whales!! well it didnt end there it went on to say that their hunt should be very humane and the chukchis should only use their indigenous ways.Chukchis cannot use modern boats for hunting or towing the whales to shore.
Every hunt should be informed to the officials so that it can be monitored. Once they manage hunt and tow it to the shallow waters they cant use any machinery to get it to the land. A 100 men could only manage to put a token effort to get it to the shore.Finally they endup slicing it in the shallow waters itself.
The clause to the amendment is more of a political sadism.
To the best of my memory for the past 4 yrs I was never home for diwali, and for the last couple I ended up celebrating "Hanabi" the Japanese version of festival of lights. Well Hanabi here is more like the July 4th Fireworks display,the only diffence being that many japanese tend to dress more traditionally.
Copious mails of diwali wishes gave me a "Chelo kuch karte hey" kind of "josh" which once again pulled me into hobby tuned obsession (digital click). The Indian store on my last order sent a couple of complementary "diya"(clay made). To give a creative touch I started off without a plan. As said creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes and choosing which of them to keep. Since I was shooting lights I needed a dark background : set the table with a couple of black T-Shirts and used the sigma lense in macro mode at 300mm.Finally the snaps found their place in the diwali greetings card.
Greetings
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I was an advocate of KISS, acknowledging my inablity to comprehend complex theories. Not many innovations look as simple as the Philips FluidFocus lens.
Philips Research Labs cameup with a Fluid focus lense. The concept was something like emulating the human eye.To understand the design all one needs is basic school physics.Why not hear it from the horses mouth fluid focus.Dont forget to check out the video that demonstrates how it can focus on objects at different distances.
Q: Now what turns me on?
A: When I discover that there is some one out there who adores KISS.
KISS : Keep it simple stupid
Shortly there is going to be a population explosion in the file formats you guess which file format is going to outsmart Chinese+Indian population by leaps and bounds? .....???
No need to strain your grey cells its the one and only one JPEG.
In the winter of 1998 when I was flipping though a tech magazine at the college library I came across a term "Digital Still Camera", the concept was simple a CCD sensor --> Analog to Digital convertor--> DSP processor(Imaging algorithm) --> RAW/JPEG file. I said to myself this is it, this is the solution to all my problems. Well let me tell you what the problem was : I always felt I had a good eye for photography but could never afford one in the first place. In those days photography was always a rich mans passion.
wrt the DSC the Pros listed were : A. One time Investment B. Unlimited shots(limit: memory size).etc and virtually NO Cons other than the Price(is this true).
My long wait came to an end in the spring of 2001, I bought myself a Kodak KB-10 (a point and shoot)camera.It costed some 700INR/15USD with 2kodak 36/ISO200 film rolls free. I started my journey by pondering over the kodak website for the photo tips.With a point and shoot there was nothing to worry,just choose ISO100/200/400 film and all you need to look for is proper framing of the subject.I enjoyed it to the best. I captured real good memories with it(Elxsi SD group Picnic to Hognekal waterfalls,wayanadu trek,sabarimala yatra etc).
Lessons Learnt : ISO is inversely proportional to ur lighting conditions.
Kodak KB-10
My profession got me to the land of cameras : Japan, getting a decent remuneration I just went with the flow.We started touring Japan,and started with Osaka-Nara.I walked into a camera shop(may be yodobashi),was clueless on what camera to buy !! Finally made up my mine if its 1.2/2/3Meg pixel I will pick up the highest of all.Now which brand to choose ? only one brand I been hearing for my childhood Japans No:1 brand SONY. So I landed up with a 5 Mega Pixel Sony P10 cybershot.with a 3x optical zoom it looked really great. Well the other numericals were just greek and Latin to me.
Sony Cybershot P-10
Ended up paying 70K Yen/28K INR/620USD that includes a 32+128 MB Sony Memory Sticks.The funny part was that 8 of my colleagues bought the cybershot P8, some assuming that I bought it after a through review of all the models. Any way it didn't disappoint us todate.The best memories that I captured was my parents visit to Japan. By now I became a photography buff and day by day I started finding fault with the quality. I was most disappointed when I was not getting the right exposures. Realized that the camera was not built for what I demanded. Only option was to switch to a better one.
Lessons Learnt : Decent photographic print(postcard size) demands 3.2Meg Pixel.Dont be fooled by the mega pixel nos unless u need larger prints.
Of all the Digital Cameras my value to money camera happens to be the Nikon coolpix 3.2-5 Meg pixel range.
With my quest for perfection at an all time high. I planned to switch to Digital SLR. For almost 6 months I was in a fix of which religion should I choose. As its a kinda rubicon once I choose btw Nikon and Canon. A couple of trips to Yodobashi camera shop in tokyo left me clueless. I finally drew the line and Kissed the Digital Rebel Canon a Good bye and hugged the Nikon D70. One thing for sure the Nikon bodies give you a feel good factor in your hand.Nikon being my subconscious choice.
Well today is "bunka no hi" i.e., CULTURE DAY (A day for promotion of culture and the love for freedom and peace. On the culture day, schools and the government award certain persons for their special, cultural activities)but for me its one more day to lock myself up at home.
For the past 10days I was trying to mimic Mahesh Room environment(what they call the perfect Bachelors Room), by just letting things find their own center of gravity, well I scored a 90% for sure but this morning I couldnt take it any longer so I put on my "shudata aur parishudata" hat and in no time it was back to its glory.
Since I didnt have any plan, I turned on the TV and no sooner I was wondering if I am in USA ? out of the 12 free public channels broadcasted - one was all dedicated to US Election Counting. What is this WORLD ELECTIONs or US ELECTIONS ? For obvious reasons Japanese are US Crazy but this was a bit too much. The US Elections being dealt with the same intensity as the Japanese, guess only the coordinated of the repoters changed.Well this is what "Power and Influence" can do(I am not here to debate that Power leads to influence or what so ever).
I finally found company for the day "So Lost And So At Home" :OSHO. Eight of the sixteen discourses where captured in this book that Osho gave during the spring and summer of 1980. Once you are into this book you can't excuse your self. The more I try to question , the more I tend to accept his answers. Where does this book sit in the classification : Jokes / Spiritual / ?? (do I need to coin one).Well if you figure this out then do let me know.