Month: September 2002

A recent article by set me wondering… …

361, Shankaranagar, Nagpur. I have lived here all my life, right from day one, I never left it for more than a week’s holiday… …

Is this Home?

The house where I live is older than me, I know each and every crack that have developed the wall, even the ones which were filled. I know the branches of all the trees around, I learnt to how to climb on them. I know all the 72 varieties of birds which can be seen in the garden sometime or the other

Is this Home?

When I take a walk with my son I still go past the school where I studied, still wish “good morning” to the teachers on their way (soon they will all retire). I show Aasim the classrooms where I studied… … The LAD college (more elaborately Lady Amritabai Daga College for Women) is still there 100 meters from my house, though the students now are mere kids 🙂

Is this Home?

Almost all my friends have left Nagpur, I never was a people’s person anyway BUT some of them return and meet me still and we recount our school and college days.

Is this Home?

We rarely meet relatives OR people around but I know in case of emergency I can summon up the best medical experts of the city and folks who will come and care…

My parents lived here, Swati’s parents are still here

There’s never been a communal riot in Nagpur (atleast post independence)

Is this Home?

Everything about Nagpur is laid back – more so its industry and business people they suck, they try to drag you down, There is no broadband net here … …

Is this Home?

You bet it is!!!

In the past, so many times we have debated moving out – then always comes the inevitable question – for what? the invariable answer is – for a better life?

Oh No! we are not going to fall for that – may be a bit more money BUT I will anyways never have enough to buy that Rs1.5core Ferrari, so that part is > /dev/null

May be a few more friends – friends did I say? Have I forgotten there is no place called as far away?

May be a better future for Aasim – No! he is growing up with Nature, his Grand parents and most importantly with a lot of time spent with *us*

Compared to what is there now, my efforts of last Sunday look ugly. Also the shades and strokes are now seen even in smaller images. Printing these images in grayscale on handmade paper gives good effect, but will have to see how much the ink spreads over time. Will try it on the photopaper as well.

There are 8 drawings and one of them is real hand drawn – Guess which?

Note: Contains nudity, you have been warned, I will in no way be liable for scandalising your mom, pop, sister, daughter, girlfriend or wife… ….

A very tense and hectic day in BUT all worth it in the end. The first phase has been successfully deployed and tested on the remote server. I will do the final testing on Monday – but from the looks of it things are fine.

I don’t know if Aasim heard this one OR just wondered himself

Aasim: Mama Gandhiji ke pass bahut paise the kya?
Swati: No beta, but why do you ask?
Aasim: Then why is his picture there on every note… …

Cash flow isn’t !!!

Given two identical servers your web application will fail to run on the remote one.
Corollary:Identical web servers are not identical

Warm Wednesday … … Things are on schedule – got the server much to my relief. Among other things I updated my smirnoff ads collection thanks to vaibhav for the links – now there are 24 ads in the album. Also I know that there are several more – will hunt for them

A peaceful Monday… …

Spent some more time refining the technique of creating pencil drawing from photographs using GIMP. The results were much better results than yesterday – now pencil strokes can be seen in smaller images as well.

This works best for landscapes and figures with less tonal range – also soft focus pictures are no good

Renounce the world, say sages.

But such words of wisdom
are only tired cliches.

For who can forsake
such luscious hips
grabbed tight by a girdle
of flashing rubies?

By Bharthari

Spent the past two hours with GIMP and a photograph and this is the result. Turned out to be easier in the end BUT very different from the approach I was taking initially, that is why it took 2 hours 😉

Initially I had thought that I would write a HOW-TO but it turned out so simple that it is not worth the trouble ….

Tried to replicate the same using Adobe Photoshop 6 – needless to say could not figureout how to …. ….

While there is loads of software for reading EXIF data from jpeg I could hardly find anything which allowed me to write EXIF data into jpeg. I was searching for something with CLI on Linux. PHP has neat function exif_read_data and exif_thumbnail, but exif_write_data function is missing – time to look into the EXIF specs… …

I found jhead at https://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead/ and it is the next best thing to having nothing at all.

Oh! for the uninitiated – EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File Format, and is a standard for storing interchange information in image files, especially those using JPEG compression. Most digital cameras now use the EXIF format.

36 today!!!

Most people mark milestones of age in decades at 20,30,40 years of age

But I would rather prefer doing it 16,26,36 years may be even add 6 to the list. The reason I prefer this is 6 years is when you start remembering things for life, at 16 you are physically old enough to start thinking in an adult oriented manner, then on 10 years seems a reasonable time span.

16 Years: With barely 9 months past moms death, 16th birthday was a mix of emotions, I was no longer a child but definitely not old enough to be thrust upon the responsibility of looking after dad (who was absolutely heartbroken after mom) and then carving out an identity for myself, defining the set of ethics which will last me a lifetime, trying to find a soulmate!!!

The late teens were full turmoil, pain and realization that whatever happens the sky never falls on your head.

26 Years: The 26th birthday was spent with Swati in Hotel Sheraton Sea Rock, Mumbai. I had already proposed marriage to her and she had agreed BUT it was on this very day that we made concrete plans as to how we were going to about it. The day was spent luxuriating in each others company. I took some photos of Swati one of which has been on our bedroom wall right since day 1 of our marriage. The evening dinner was a sampling of the fabulous Dum Pukth cuisine served there.

Getting married took almost 2 years, by that time I knew my potential, both of us were earning huge amounts by norms of the day, but 2 years into the marriage life was in a rut and a rat race. God listened (he always does whenever the situation is desperate – thanks God) and we were conferred with Parenthood, Aasim was born 5th Nov 97. Parenthood changed our perspective, we wanted out of the race. SANIsoft was conceptualized and conceived in Jan 98, since then we have not looked back and certainly never had a dull day – there is always something to worry or celebrate every day!!! Most of my dreams have come true.

36 Years: Aasim, our precious son, gave me a gift, a gift which he for the first time choose himself with full understanding of the act. It is a ground glass show piece with three porpoises which he says represent our family swimming the seas (of the world), don’t know wether the boy is precocious or every child is this perceptive.

The next ten years I intend to grow up along with him … …