Author: Tarique Sani

My studio stuck for a want of a proper backdrop system, just not getting the time. This is in a way good – it simply means that I have more work which means more money which means a better camera sooner….

Wait a min – I do not get paid for working anyways 🙁

A backdrop did not prevent me from having a photo shoot however – this time it was using available light and experiments with shallow DoF, this(NWS) was the result, I would have really liked the picture to be in color with the vase being in one of the primary colors but in this case the vase was almost the same as the model’s skin tone.

Aasim already knows at least 2 things better than me

#1 Flying kites
#2 Playing tabla and identifying the taals

Makes me feel proud – Guess we are still doing pretty well as parents 🙂

We had wished that this would happen.

Paypal now sends cheques to India, there are few riders like the amount is remitted in INR (read you don’t get benefits of getting FOREX in), there is no electronic transfer to your account (read takes very long), there is a charge of US$5/- per cheque, the conversion rate is about INR 0.5 less than what our bank give (read you get less money than you would like) – But still it means that we can get money in.

Hmmm… would I trust my cheque to US and Indian Postal Services!

We finally wrenched ourselves from the sentimental attachments and got rid of the 40 year old wooden sofa set which we had.

We have it with what is commonly known as “Ferro work” sofa, basically tubular iron with black powder coating. I know that this new one will not last as long as the older one did but right now it looks much better is lighter and occupies less space and has more seats…. If this looks like I am trying to get rid of my guilt pangs then you are right I have not really over come those till now.

Hopefully, as someone suggested, using the new sofa as a prop in one of my shoots will cure me.

Another thing which I had debated for long and often put off for another day was inserting Google Ads on my site. I definitely don’t need the money and I also know that given the keywords I have I will not make more than a few cents a week but the sheer relevancy of ads which Google serves makes it interesting to have them. do look at them if you happen to be at my site

All this came to light when we did some work on tracking Google ads in a client’s application.

Biryani for breakfast.

A client wants an on line Mind Mapping software, I had said that Java Applets / Flash + PHP was the way to go, however he wanted it using JS + PHP. I would have given up on the project had one of the specification not been – should run in Firefox 1.0 and above.

Planning to use a combination of three open source projects to achieve the end result

Vector drawings using Javascript
JP Span
and
QWAD Application Framework

This is only the second time that a client has specified Firefox as the common denominator for browsers.

Yesterday myself and Swati hopped into a book exhibition though we had only 45 min we were able to get two books – An annotated guide published by DK for ARTS which has about 80 paintings by great masters explained. The second book I got is on Making Paper Airplanes which has 30 models (yeah all of them fly) once I master them I will know how to make more than 50 different types of paper airplanes which fly 🙂

However the thumb rule for paper airplanes is always holds – the simplest models fly the best.

Continuing about books I was pleasantly surprised today when I got two requests for permission to have my photographs included in books, no they are not photography books, two are on thermodynamics and the other is on social service.

Have started teaching Aasim Logo programming about a week ago, we started with KTurtle, Aasim also liked the very nice KDE interface but to my dismay it has a bug in displaying the correct line numbers when errors occur. While this is OK of now when I can tell Aasim which line he went wrong – it will soon hamper his experimentation besides it does not have bindings to any toolkit which means no Windowed application programming which he hopes to do.

Searching around I found MSWLogo and the more popular and commercial MicroWorlds EX. However I was horrified by the WYSIWYG style of MicroWorlds (it seems to be modeled after some M$ IDE ) and quickly rejected it.

So for now it will be MSWLogo which even though very plain looking fits the bill perfectly, best of all there is a wonderful free book called The Great Logo Adventure aimed at children which uses MSWLogo as the base.

Lets see how long Aasim’s interest lasts – more than teaching programming the idea is to give him logical and problem solving skill, but I do hope that he keeps at it and perhaps takes up C (with or without ++) in near future.

I guess I will have to learn a bit of teaching skills from his tabla teacher who has managed to enchant him into the world of music.

In the daily drudgery department – the painting of walls etc at home has been completed as has been the construction of my Studio, will have the electric wiring and the backdrop system in place the coming week. Hopefully next Sunday I will be able to have a shoot there.

Swati: Aaaaasimmm….
No answer…
Swati: Aaaaasimmmmmmm

No answer! He is finally located sitting in his room busy with something arcane

Swati: Why don’t you reply?
Aasim: Sssh! don’t disturb me I am inside a (computer) game and someone else is controlling me