Focal length and filter exercises

A closeup of the toy's face at 55mm macro.

A 200mm shot of sculpture atop the opposite building

A macro shot using the 200mm lens at 145mm. The ability to narrow down the focus with the long range lens renders the background window pane that is 2-3 inches behind the bee-doll in a blurry way to give more prominence to the focused subject.

An exercise on applying filters. Above is the original macro photo shot at 55mm. Below is the same photo with Red enhancement filter applied, which is one of the camera's inbuilt postprocessing options.

Helpful links on digital photography and the D60

Nikon's own D60 tutor site with entry level tutorials: http://www.nikondigitutor.com/eng/d60/index.shtml

A nice and helpful blog I encountered, maintained by professional photographers. Here's their online book on basic nature photography:
http://www.cameraontheroad.com/?cat=102

Hello, D60

I played around a bit and got to click this photo with the camera itself using 2 mirrors, which is noticeable in the aliasing of letters.

This grid compares the Nikon's sensor (left photos) with our Sony DSC 4.1MP's sensor (right photos). Nikon is able capture the room's ambience as it really is while Sony is able to slurp up only a fraction of the available light.

This is a crop of a photo taken with the Sigma 55-200mm lens with full-zoom, statically placed and shot with self-timer to avoid camera shaking in my hands. The doll was 10 feet away from where I shot the snap. The image can be improved by using a higher JPEG quality level setting but the texture of the 1.5 inch carrot can still be seen.

With a small test of field view comparison, I can preliminarily conclude that the zoom of the lens at 200mm is similar to that of my old 10x Samsung binocular's. So to me it looks like, 200mm lens == 10x zoom.

This shot was taken in complete darkness with the Sigma lens at 55mm with self-timer and static positioning. The camera took all of the 30 seconds (max exposure time) to finally give this shot - for a moment I thought the camera was 'hanging' but finally I heard the shutter close. The faint light came through the window from the sreet lamp. This shot was auto-calibrated to be shot at ISO 400 sensitivity (checked this in the image properties using the camera's playback). The 10.2 MP image had enough pixels in it to correctly render the dimly lit dwarf and pig dolls (to the left of the upper shelf).

Nikon D60: Diamond in monkey's hands!

The feeling that I right now have is not dissimilar to the essence of the kannada proverb, "Mangana kaili MaaNikya", the title of this blog. With a new, highly sophisticated "entry-level" (just to scare novices like me) digital SLR camera - the Nikon D60, finally out of the box and in to my untrained, eager hands, I just can't wait to explore its capabilities!

Single Lens Reflex technology equals mind-boggling photos - with that expectation set, I will begin a learning journey that I hope to catalog on this blog with pictures and observations. Hopefully, I will even get to try out other SLRs and compare their strengths with our Nikon D60...but to begin with, I will stick to some standalone, "Hello, World" tests.

KIDiddles Song Lyrics - A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go (Version 1)

Finally, finally! The song I've been looking for the lyrics of, ever since I graduated from listening to nursery rhymes (i.e. around 16 years of age)...
KIDiddles Song Lyrics - A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go (Version 1)

I'd heard this song on a Walt Disney cassette tape and had carried the tune fresh in my mind so long...these lyrics serve the tune best..not the bob dylan verion of the song, which has too many words in its opening verse to fit into the tune I know, which I plan to sing with my guitar sparsley strung in the background and record this -- for my son ;-)

Up in smokes

Mumbai up in flames...live tv's streaming in lands afar...the anguish and the sunken feeling...a feeling of hopelessness and a search for reason..."how can you take someone's life?"...questions richocheting in a mind that speaks seldom to itself beyond asking such questions of the dark kind...

May the bereaved find solace...god knows where...

Passionate about Life 'n Spice...: Veg Balls in Garlic Sauce

Passionate about Life 'n Spice...: Veg Balls in Garlic Sauce

Picasa Web Albums - Chai - Garmisch, Germany

Picasa Web Albums - Chai - Garmisch, Germany

Our one-day trip that was a lot of funnn-nnn! *shudder*

IE8 Beta 2

I'm writing this blog from my IE8 beta 2 browser that I installed today. Some self-proclaimed unbiased blog sites reported that it brought a good set of goodies along, and I had no reasons to doubt them. The installation itself was a breeze (meaning only one restart). The goodies I am looking forward to using are the "Accelerators", just a new bottle for the old wine "addons" that can be found under http://ieaddons.com/.
In the past, these addons were almost 3rd party domain and I would never have a good feeling in the stomach about them. So when MS said "hey come and get these addons from us", I ran with my cup for the free drinks.

So far, i.e., a few page surfs and streaming live TV minutes later, so good. But I've done no real surfing of the kinds I do normally (read: 25+ tabs open simultaneously).

This multi-page stress test, I've seen Google Chrome Beta pass, which is the subject of my next post..

Key strokes on keystrokes

Starting to blog after 6 months of hiatus -- it's like starting a car after its being lying idle in the garage over the entire winter with its battery all but drained out. When the battery"s gone down on you, you need an external battery to rev up the engine and then have the battery charge up while you run the engine...and in a few miles, kilometers, minutes, of relentless revving of the engine, you"ll have your battery waking up from its forced, unplanned, undue, sleep and will respond like a happy puppy. 

For me, the external battery has been the revisiting of regular blogs that I used to visit, Sandesh's blog and Bol's blog. A little bit of orkuting also threw in its worthy 2 cents. And the result: thoughts are concieved, keystrokes are born.  

The hintergrund: Well, I finally have the house wired to the internet here in Germany after 3 calendar months of lading here.  And to get myself to blogging again is like going back to your old city, walking through busy, narrow streets that you used to tread,  and finally, finding that old, small coffee shop where you would sit, talk and resonate with yourself in a crowd of millions.

Another reason for me to get on with blogging out here in the internets is that I need to push myself to blog in the office intranet. I'm hoping that this casual blogging shoe-horns me into blogging technical stuff in my office where the stakes are high, or at least I perceive them to be high.

A jog a day keeps the cold away.  so does a blog. 

and with this, i resume impromptuous. 

Dichotomy of Eternity and Instance

What's there to choose between an instance and eternity -- an eternity can be gone in an instance just as an instance can be experienced to eternity. Can eternity be experienced physically? Someone once said "Imagine a housefly orbiting the galaxy at its normal speed and once in a million years, it brushes past a metallic ball the size of the Earth. By the time the fly's repeated contact the metallic ball polishes the ball to nothingness, eternity would have not even begun." But with all the appreciation of our lack of grasp on eternity, we fail to take notice of all that happens in a whisker of a mere instance around us. If we cannot fathom all that happens in an instance, how can we treat Instance with disregard when compared to its daunting sibling, the Eternity?

The Cricket Stock Exchange

The Cricket Stock Exchange
Thursday, April 1st, 2010

The Cricket Stock Exchange was inaugurated today to the public amid grand festivities and extravagance. "It is the first ever stock exchange in the history of humankind to allow commoners to invest and trade stocks of sportsmen and watch their bank balances soar like the shiny cricket ball blessed by the Midas touch of Sachin's Willow", chirped Sharad Pawar, President of CSE, wiith his master matador Lalit Modi standing tall beside him. Although there's a lot of speculation around whether people are ready to put their money on the pitch, it is likely to emerge as a strong investment option considering the recent recession in the APAC markets and the long billowing US economy.

Would I, an average salaried class employee, toss my hard-earned Gandhi imprints into this roulette? What are the chances that I'll get to see the Mahatmas back? It turns out that my worries are as confirmed or as unfounded as are chances of India winning the next 5 ODI's against any cricketing nation. At the same time, Sharad and Lalit are Laloo Yadavs when it comes to milking a cow, and it seems that their milch cow has birthed another milch cow almost overnight -- so its easy to figure where the bulls have decided to make their harem: the CSE of course. But the bears, you fear? Well the bears were last seen rummaging through the beehive-infested, and eerily deserted Wall Streets and Dalal Streets of our round planet, which by the way, will soon adorn the looks of a cricket ball-like moneyspinner.

So who're you and what going to trade? CSE wants to play a defensive stroke for now, while promising lofty sixers for the future. It currently provides vanilla segments familiar to investors. The first one is for the long-term investors, your large-cap market -- the ICC Top 40 Cricketers Index (CRIX), the stalwarts who have proved their worth in all forms of the game. The mid-cap segment offers you the confident, promising, delivering youngsters who're poised to adorn the halls of fame tomorrow. As for the small caps, you have the dark horses who've outshone their celebrated comrades at times, but their brilliance is confined to a single form of the game. Then of course, you have an array of mutual funds whose NFOs are coming up round the corner but the ICC is yet to come up with any tax relief schemes with these funds. Hedge funds are still being mooted, says Lalit Modi, who is quick to reiterate the open market advantages of the CSE.

So when do you buy and sell stocks on the CSE? Well, consider these headlines and brace yourself in the pads of an avid investor to get the drift: "Yuvraj fit for the next Aussie Series, promises 5 centuries", "Bhajji and Symonds to star in Spielberg's Bollywood debut", "Steyn pulls a hamstring, unfit for the hyped matchup against Ishant"...

Only time will tell whether CSE will bring the smile back on billions of investors across the globe. Until then, stay vested!

Mother Earth of samples: Blue Note records

Blue Note records, the jazz label, has given me - your average avid hiphop listener, many an instrumental melody that mentally smoke up all those gritty hiphop records I've come to love. My respects to hiphop producers who carefully handpick jazz samples for their beats, and give us listeners everlasting gems. Nearly every hiphop producer, from Dr. Dre to Kanye, would've at some point in time had his hands dusty sifting through the basement looking for old vinyl jazz records to look for that one last sample that would make their artwork complete.

I came about this link that has J Rocc (who I learn is an accomplished beat junkie) mixing Blue Notes' compilation of popular hiphop-sampled jazz samples with the hiphop tracks that samples them. I'm done guzzling the bandwidth for the day so I'ma return tomorrow and roll that stream out.

Is DevnhaLLi airport too far? we found out...

Errbody nowadays, even the 24/7 channels all over the cable bandwidth, are ranting about how horrible traffic conditions are in and BengaLooru and how impractical is it to throw the BIAL aka devanhaLLi airport open to public. So it was high time that my wife and I, as dutiful denizens of Hebbal, which is just (ahem!) 30km away from the airport, drove the distance for ourselves and published our report to the general masses. So here goes:

0900: "yaawn.., are we going on the drive?"

0945: "ಅಮ್ಮ, ಗುಳ್ಳಪ್ಪ ಸಕ್ಕತ್ತಾಗಿದೆ!"

0954: "off we go! meter reading: 116728"

1004: First traffic holdup @ kodigehaLLi gate - 5min

1020: second traffic holdup @ yelahanka bypass - 2min

1035: cruise past trumpet flyover...and the airport entrance

1040: u-turn!

1043: 50 minutes and a 10km deviation later, we're there! meter reading: 116765

1044: Airport 5km stretch entrance: "Sorry madam, get pass from hebbal police station"

1045: On the way bacc, drive's smooth as krayzie bone's flow!

1114: 30 min from the airport and we're at Hebbal flyover! meter reading: 116788

Verdict: The drive from Hebbal is a breeze; the 25km drive took roughly 45 min to, and 35 min from, the airport. This was a weekend but there's no ITPL or electronics city thisaway to account for any substantial addition of traffic on weekdays. Also, even if the airport opens, given the wide roads of Byatarayanapura and beyond, traffic on this final stretch of the drive still should not be a deterrant.

And driving the sierra at 2000 rpm on this stretch roccs! figuratively of course ...

ಸಂದೇಶ್ ರೇಡಿಯೋನಲ್ಲಿ !!

Sandesh ೯೨.೭ FM ನಲ್ಲಿ ಈಗ ಪ್ರೊಗ್ರಾಮ್ ಕೊಡ್ತಾ ಇದ್ದಾನೆ, ತುಂಬಾನೆ ಖುಷಿಯಾಗುತ್ತೆ :-) ಒಂದ್ ಘಂಟೆ ಪ್ರೋಗ್ರಮು, ೫.p.m-೬.p.m, ಸಕ್ಕತ್ ಮಜಾ ಕೊಡ್ತಾ ಇದ್ದಾನೆ. "ಕೇಳಿ ಕೇಳಿಸಿ ಲೈಫ್ ನಿಮ್ಮದಾಗಿಸಿ"!

ಚೀಯರ್ಸ್!

Talib Kweli and Mick Boogie: MCEO

One of the finest additions to my mixtape collection - incredibly good music gifted to the masses for free - mixtapes such as these truly carry the spirit of a musician: music is like philosophy, and an accomplished philosopher would address a crowd of thousands without asking for a penny in return; all he seeks is a deeper insight into his mindworks by listening to himself and to the response of his audience. There're only a few Mick Boogies in the hiphop community but hopefully we will see them get the better of corporate music giants whose shortsightedness is outclouding the yeateryear shine of this crossover genre that is hiphop. Check out his mixtapes including this one at his website or at datpiff.

Talib Kweli's music will certainly be with me on my Noah's arc - first heard him on kanye's College Dropout and then went on to buy his album Kwality -- another great album. So when I heard he's out with Mick Boogie blacksmithing new music, I wanted in!

Elephant in the sand

I would never buy a Fat Joe album, not even at INR100 (at INR50..? maybe..for beat-scavenging). but a FatJoe-diss album served free by the good brothers of G-Unit? Hizell yeah! as i write i'm banging Red light Green light from the mixtape "Elephant in the sand". A 68mb download - a good 30 odd minutes of high quality sound, music, rapping, and well, cursing. But i'm into this for the first three goodies, and for this, i give it a 5.0/5.0.

Alas, this is also going to be the last of DJ Whookid's mixtapes..self-admittedly he's fed up with everything that smells like beef (read rap game rivalries, that are often fuelled by what else, mixtapes) and is going to retire now at 30 (!!) and live far away in his hut in Thailand.

Man...retirement at 30...if i retired today, move with my family away from all this chaos...to a cosy hut somewhere along the beaches of nammooru South Canara...would i still be able to affizzord the internet chizzarges to download mixtapes?? i think i need to kill the lights on this post right now, talk to my better half on retiring and chizzew on it...

Practical UML modeling tips

I found Scott Ambler's site really useful in my work - he covers practical usage of commonly used UML diagrams -- I've gone through his writing on state machines and activity diagrams: clear, concise and illustrative. Here's the jumpoff page:
http://www.agilemodeling.com/artifacts/

Technical search engines

Here're a couple of technical search engines that I've come to use frequently:

CiteSeer: This one's a true goldmine that I've been using since the last 5-6 years
Scientific Commons: This one's a recent find, acts like a frontend to CiteSeer and probably other engines.

Writing a Whitepaper

Did this Google search and found something for starters like me

http://www.mwknowles.com/free_articles/white_paper/white_paper.html